:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 7.27.2004 ::

:: "The Blogger Circus" ::

From washingtonpost.com
By Robert MacMillan

The press is making plenty of hay lately about the Democratic Party's decision to treat a small list of Web loggers ("bloggers" for the stubbornly uninitiated) just like real journalists at this week's presidential nominating convention in Boston. Most of the coverage of the Boston bloggers has been pretty straightforward, while here and there you can discern a whiff of shock from professional journalists, something along the lines of, "Who are these thieves in our temple?"

But a press pass is not the same thing as a party pass. As sleep-deprived, overcaffeinated, grouchy journalists already know, covering events like a national convention is all about spending hour after tedious hour enduring boring politico-speak and being kept away from the stars of the show while a couple of top-dog columnists exchange bon mots with the real glitterati somewhere else. And it seems like some of the bloggers have realized this -- though they're taking it in stride.

There's evidence to this end at The Providence Journal's blog site, where Sheila Lennon in her "Subterranean Homepage News" (nice Bob Dylan nod there) reports straight from Blogger's Boulevard at the Democratic National Convention. As she notes, the bloggers may be the talk of the town, but that hardly translates into front seats; they sit "way up in the rafters of the Fleet Center, just below the CNN booth." Lennon uses the words of Jesse Taylor, author of the Pandagon blog: "Okay, so as virtual nobodies, we've learned a valuable lesson. Knowing about parties does not garner you a way in to parties. Perhaps the most important lesson of this convention, bar none. I really need to get in someone important's pants by Tuesday in order to actually meet people -- at this rate, I'm going to be reduced to hoping that someone shows up at one of the events I've already been invited to. I'll even take a Utah Democrat, I swear!"

And another interesting thought from Pandagon on why the bloggers have been getting so much coverage: "We are kinda new, making us newsesque. We're a good destination point for young journalists needing to file a story. But here on the inside, used to and comfortable with being ignored, the attention seems astounding -- are they covering anything else!? Well, yeah; of course they are. We're just getting some much undeserved coverage as well. People are fascinated by bloggers (ooh, what a strange word!), but a lot is filed in a day and our obsessive notation of every media mention (60 seconds here, two paragraphs there) makes small but plentiful references seem like major stories occupying huge chunks of the media's resources. They aren't. It's just that those stories are occupying a disproportionate amount of our -- my self-googling ass included -- minds."

Back at the Providence Journal, Lennon notes the character of much of the blog coverage at the convention in a single phrase: "Show it, don't tell it." As she reported yesterday afternoon, "Reports from the The Bloggers Breakfast this morning range from 'We had breakfast and Barack Obama and Howard Dean spoke' to good, you-are-there reports."
• The Providence Journal: Bottom-up' Journalism From the Pros

National Public Radio correspondent Robert Smith covered the bloggers in a report that aired Tuesday morning. He noted that their "sometimes quirky, often shrewd novelty made them media stars." Smith took note of the special breakfast where convention chief executive Rod O'Connor greeted the famous 35 personally. NPR followed up with some more analysis of what it means to be a blogger -- and the "definite coolness factor attached to it" -- citing New York University journalism department head Jay Rosen (himself a blogger) as saying that "their impact may be exaggerated" but they provide a nice change from "jaded journalists."
• National Public Radio: Bloggers Offer Intimate View of Convention

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 4:31:00 PM [+] ::
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