Blogging About the Election

So this week's blog post about the election is about...blogging about the election. You follow?

According to the NY Times, Democrats are inviting more bloggers to their convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver next August than ever before. I'm not really sure what "than ever before" means, but at least more than 30 -- the number of bloggers who were allowed into the convention in 2004.

The NY Times interviewed Jason Rosenberg, the director of online communications for the Democratic National Committee, about the decision to give "the new media a chance to shine." Rosenberg said that more bloggers at the convention will improve convention coverage, because “bloggers can give you 24-hour coverage of the convention, of the delegate meetings, of the caucuses, of the parties. Everything that goes on, the bloggers can be there to cover.”

While this might be true, I suspect that the main reason Democrats decided to allow more bloggers into the convention not to show that they're the hip party -- the party willing to expand citizen involvement in the electoral process by putting election coverage into the hands of informally trained citizen journalists.

And it's not like the Democrats are taking a risk by inviting more bloggers. The word "blogger" still has partisan connotations -- blogs often clearly favor the Democrats or Republicans. It will be easy for the convention organizers to invite only those bloggers who are likely to portray Democratic candidates favorably. Not to mention that the majority of bloggers are liberal in the first place. When you hear the word "blogger" don't you just think of artsy college students posting from their dorm rooms, or young journalism grads fresh out of college posting from their parents' basements? I mean, we all know what people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh think of the bloggers -- the "left-wing slime machines."

The NY Times seems to commend the Democrats for putting more power in the hands of the "new media," but don't we usually associate the new media with the left anyway? The Democrats move to allow more bloggers into their convention is commendable, but I'm sure they expect that the majority of the invited bloggers to cover the convention and its Democratic candidates favorably.

Want to sign up to cover the convention? The Democratic National Convention is calling on "progressive bloggers." Are you one?