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All Blogging Is Local

Former House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O'Neill was famous for the maxim that "all politics is local," and this weekend, some of the nation's top conservative bloggers acknowledged that the adage may be just as relevant today in the blogosphere.

Political blogs established a national reputation first thanks to high-profile takedowns of politicians like former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and journalists such as former CBS News anchor Dan Rather. They've also secured some noteworthy policy victories in fights against the federal bureaucracy, including the Federal Election Commission and the Senate.

But local bloggers across the country have been battling just as unrelentlessly against the politicians, journalists and bureaucrats in their communities. Their efforts were one of the hotter topics of conversation Saturday at Carolina FreedomNet, a blog conference hosted by the John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina-based think tank.

The foundation published video snippets of a panel discussion on that topic (plus one other panel), and national bloggers such as Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall, the daughter of foundation communications director Jon Ham, blogged about it after the conference.

"I've always felt a little guilty that I'm not better informed about the city council," Ms. Ham wrote. "The folks who do follow and blog that stuff are doing yeoman's work." She also warned that "are in danger of conceding the battleground to lefties, which is dangerous."

"Local blogging communities will become, and are already in some places, really important to electoral politics and local policy," Ham added. "Both are of great importance to conservatives. You don't want local left blogger down the road blogging up the need for a new granola-paved bike path and the need to use your tax dollars to pay for it, and not have your own message to counter him. If there's a vacuum, they will fill it, and the right blogosphere tends to be a bit behind on these kinds of things."

Ham offered one specific suggestion for local blogging by conservatives: exposing media bias in their communities.

More coverage of the conference is available at Gay Patriot, Hang Right Politics, Power Line, Sam's Notes, Sister Toldjah and Wizbang.

UPDATE: Ed Cone, a well-known blogger in Greensboro, N.C., also was at Carolina FreedomNet.

"This was a conservative political conference built around Web themes, utilizing a traditional format of panels and a keynote speaker. It worked well on its own terms," he said, adding that the ConvergeSouth Web conference in Greensboro this coming Saturday will be "a very different kind of thing."

I attended ConvergeSouth last year primarily to learn about podcasting, and several months later, I became National Journal's first podcaster for Technology Daily. Our weekly episodes are available at the Tech Policy Pod.

Posted by Danny | 07:53 PM

Comments

I was there, hated it and let them know it.

Here's the podcast of the second session. Judge for yourself.

http://fecundstench.com/Carolina FreedomNet 2006.mp3

Fec Stench | 10.10.06 08:41 PM

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