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As noted in this morning's Technology Daily:

President Bush on Wednesday referred to an Iraq-based blog while defending his military strategy.

AP reports that Bush quoted from a blog in a speech at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association to demonstrate the progress being made in Iraq. He did not identify the blog that he was quoting.

The White House clarified later that Bush referred to Iraq The Model, which is written by Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, two brothers whom Bush met in Washington in 2004.

"What the president was doing was taking an opportunity to talk about what one person's expression is," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "But that doesn't mean that there aren't other people having the same expression."

UPDATE: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer thought Bush's appeal to the Iraqi blog in defense of his war strategy noteworthy enough to ridicule him in an editorial. But conservative blogger Michelle Malkin chastised AP for "anti-blog editorializing" in its news story about Bush's mention of the blog.

Posted by Danny at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

As reported today by Michael Martinez in Technology Daily's "State Roundup":

A South Carolina-based political Web site last week fired a blogger and former aide to Gov. Mark Sanford for comments the blogger posted after Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards announced last week that his wife's cancer had returned.

SCHotline fired former Sanford spokesman Will Folks over a post he wrote on his FITSNews blog that blasted Edwards for remaining in the presidential race despite his wife's condition. SCHotline announced in a press release that it will "discontinue any editorial and or other professional association" with Folks, who recently had become a partial owner of SCHotline.

Folks had accused Edwards of shamelessly exploiting his wife's condition for his own political gain. Folks said most Americans were "completely hoodwinked" by the family's announcement that the cancer of Elizabeth Edwards was incurable.

SCHotline Vice President Jeffrey Sewell said the company will buy back Folks' shares in the company, which he estimated are worth as much as $4,000. "He just wouldn't compromise with regard to his posts," Sewell said. "The Edwards' post was over the top."

Folks posted a tongue-in-cheek response to his termination the day after he was fired.

Posted by Danny at 01:58 PM | Comments (1)

I created a Facebook group focused on technology policy and politics today. All comers are welcome. Get the details on why over at Tech Daily Dose, and go here to join the group.

Posted by Danny at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign will be nothing like coverage of the past if bloggers Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post and Jay Rosen of NewAssignment.net have their way.

The two media revolutionaries have joined forces for a project designed to get citizens across the country involved in covering the leading candidates over the next two years. They outlined the effort in separate entries at The Huffington Post (also cross-posted at Rosen's personal blog, PressThink).

Here's the gist of it, as explained by ...

... Rosen:

[I]nstead of one well-placed reporter trailing John Edwards wherever he goes (which is one way of doing it), [the project will have] some 40 or 50 differently placed people tracking different parts of the Edwards campaign, all with peculiar beats and personal blogs linked together by virtue of having a common editor and a page through which the best and most original stuff filters out to the greater readership of the Web, especially via the Huffington Post.

... Huffington:

We'll have a Clinton blog, an Obama blog, an Edwards blog, a McCain blog, a Giuliani blog, a Romney blog, a Biden blog, a Richardson blog, a Dodd blog, a Kucinich blog, a Brownback blog, a Huckabee blog. Each offering a wide variety of voices and perspectives on the campaign they are following. These group blogs will also be a compendium of useful information about each candidate, including their latest speeches, upcoming appearances, new videos and ads, recent news articles and more.

Via e-mail, Rosen said the NewAssignment.Net will hire the editor, in consultation with The Huffington Post. One overall editor will work with "sub-editors," part-timers focused on each campaign.

"Our goal is to be interesting, offbeat and useful for readers on the open Web and from the Huffington Post," Rosen said. "Emphasis on useful, different, not the same old thing. We hope to have contributors from both parties, yes. We'll be actively recruiting people; but we're also dependent on those who raise a hand."

He added that he would like to have both Democrats and Republicans covering each of the 12 candidates currently selected.

Rosen said the effort currently does not encompass third-party candidates, independents or the Unity '08 movement, which is using the Internet to build interest in a "bipartisan presidential ticket. Senate, House and gubernatorial coverage also is not in the works.

"Why not?" Rosen said. "Well, it's good to find out if this model can work first."

The money for the project will come from donations to NewAssignment.net, which is a nonprofit based in the New York University journalism school, where Rosen is a professor. He said Huffington "has taken on most of the fundraising burden."

Rosen currently is soliciting applications for the top editor's job. Resumes can be sent to him at pressthink@journalism.nyu.edu.

Some bloggers already have taken on a more traditional role in providing presidential coverage, at least for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the leading GOP contenders.

McCain's campaign team invited bloggers onto his "Straight Talk Express" bus tour. Yesterday's edition of The Blogometer had a roundup of video from bloggers who made the trip.

Posted by Danny at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

RedState is raising money to send two members of its community to "tell the real story about what's happening on the ground in Iraq." The Pentagon extended the invitation for the coverage, and the trip will cost about $10,000. RedState's owner, Eagle Publishing, is only providing $2,500; the blog is asking readers to pitch in the rest.

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin made a similar trip earlier this year. She merited a profile in The Washington Post not long after the trip.

Posted by Danny at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

For my freshman composition class in college, I wrote a paper titled "Man vs. Grizzly." It was all about how grizzly bears were pushed to the brink of extinction in the Lower 48 states as the nation expanded westward.

I've had a fascination with bears of all kinds ever since and have a collection of trinkets both at the office and at home. That's the only reason I'm linking to and excerpting this blog entry by Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., about the move to de-list the grizzly as a "threatened species."

The de-listing of the grizzly has been a long time coming, too long -- 15 years too long, in fact. ... Listing a species without a delisting plan just doesn’t make any sense. If you don’t have a plan, it’s pretty hard to get anywhere. This process must be more efficient.

By the way, I wrote the paper before I had any interest in being a journalist, which explains the uncreative title. Back then, I wanted to get into wildlife management and track bears, preferably grizzlies. I always imagined that I, like the character Brad Pitt played in "Legends of the Fall," would be the guy eaten by a grizzly.

I am not kidding.

Posted by Danny at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

Some columnist in Syracuse, N.Y., has his knickers in a knot over blogs and other new media. Here are excerpts from his paranoid, ridiculous rant, which once again resurrects the myth that bloggers want to replace journalists:

-- "For 24 hours, let the shock jocks, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," the bloggers and the rest of the 'new media' darlings run with the ball. We'll see how far they get when they don't have their cloddish 'old media' brother clearing a path through the clutter."

-- "Everybody deserves a public voice, even morons. ... But the issue is: What will all those voices talk about if there's no news? Their family reunion jpegs on Facebook?"

-- "Ultimately, someone has to write the checks -- or not -- for large numbers of caffeinated journalists to cover the news or at least make up quotes and get fired for it. Everyone else is just a parasite clinging to the droopy rump of a struggling host animal."

Posted by Danny at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

California recently granted a press pass to a blogger, but the debate over journalistic privileges for bloggers is still going strong in other places, including South Carolina.

Tennessee Republicans attempted to find a middle ground by holding a "blogger day" earlier this month, but that concept invited scorn from Michael Silence, a blogger for the Knoxville newspaper.

"As a veteran blogger and follower of blogs," Silence said, "here's my advice to lawmakers: Ignore the pixelettes and stick with us professional print people. Really, there's no downside to ignoring the keyboard crazies." (Hey, at least he didn't go on "a manhunt for a blogger" like the St. Augstine Record in Florida.)

The folks at Firedoglake, meanwhile, called attention to what it termed the local blog journalism movement. I wonder if they'll get press passes.

More and more bloggers are certainly proving that they deserve kudos, and perhaps credentials, as journalists. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and his crew at TPMMuckraker are chief among them. The ongoing controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors might not be the hot story that it is were it not for the dogged work of the reporters in Marshall's blog empire.

He won praise in the Los Angeles Times this week and from a reporter at Time's Washington bureau chief earlier this month. Journalist/blogger Ed Cone of North Carolina thinks Marshall may well become the first blogger to win the Pulitizer Prize.

Others in media and the blogosphere also have lauded Marshall for his work. Add my name to the list.

I've noted Marshall's work both here at Beltway Blogroll and in National Journal magazine, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Cone's prediction about a Pulitzer for Marhall. proves true some day soon.

Earlier this year, blogs also were in the news for covering the trial of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

And this week, The Huffington Post unearthed the identity of the technology wizard behind the much-ballyhooed "Vote Different" advertisement against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine noted that HuffPo did so "while the rest of media was tripping over themselves to do the same story of the Hillary ad, weeks after it came out, and idly wondering who made it."

Add all of that together with new networked journalism projects like AssignmentZero and older new ones like PorkBusters, and you can understand why people are talking about a blog journalism movement.

These are indeed exciting times in the media world.

Posted by Danny at 12:11 PM | Comments (1)

That's what editor John Harris of The Politico said yesterday to the reporter who, as Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz aptly put it this morning, left egg on the face of the upstart political newspaper. And thus another mainstream journalist has learned the hard way that a blog item really isn't all that different than a story.

Listen up, my fellow newsies: A blog is just a publishing platform. If you want to retain your journalistic credibility, you should never publish anything on that platform that you wouldn't put in print or say over the air.

And don't think, like Harris, that you can "write what you know when you know it" and still maintain "standards of accuracy or fairness." You can't do it.

The Politico proved it yesterday in reporting that Democrat John Edwards would suspend his presidential campaign because of his wife's latest, and worsening, recurrence of cancer. The story cited one anoymous source and downplayed official, on-the-record comments from the Edwards campaign that the paper was about to report something false -- all because they wanted to break a story an hour before a news conference where everyone would hear the truth.

The paper deserves credit for quickly and openly admitting its error, and also for linking readers to criticism of the paper. But Harris' attitude about where the paper went wrong belies a belief that we journalists can be less meticulous online and in real time than we are when we're writing for print and on longer deadlines. The opposite is true.

News reported online can go viral within minutes, as evidenced by the mainstream news organizations and blogs alike that impulsively regurgitated The Politico's false scoop yesterday, so journalists need to be even more cautious in reporting for the Web.

If we don't, we're going to hear a whole lot more readers saying things like this from one of Harris' readers: "Politico has been removed from 'my favorites.'"

Posted by Danny at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

I mentioned yesterday that Senate Democrats invited three leading Democratic bloggers to speak to lawmakers today at a regular luncheon they hold. A blogger for The Washington Post first reported the event.

My friend Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation took exception to the Post's plug for the event as being something groundbreaking. He noted that Republican bloggers have been inside the Capitol many times and met with many key officials but never once merited the newspaper's attention.

"I don’t mind when mainstream journalists give liberal bloggers credit for breaking down barriers, but where was the coverage when a group of conservative bloggers met with then-Majority Leader Bill Frist in his Senate office last August?" he said. "No one paid the slightest bit of attention -- revealing once again the inherent liberal bias that you get from outlets such as The Washington Post."

While I understand Rob's frustration, I disagree with his gripe. I, too, mentioned today's Democratic luncheon with liberal bloggers and also have neglected to mention many of the GOP blog events on the Hill over the past several months, but it's not because of bias favoring one side or the other. It's because the Democrats once again appear to have broken new ground.

Briefings, conference calls and the like with bloggers were news back in late 2005 and early 2006 when the first ones were scheduled. Now they are fairly commonplace and most of them simply are not worth noting just for the sake of saying they are happening -- even for an "inside blogball" publication like Beltway Blogroll.

The equivalent would be the Post writing a story about so-and-so holding a press conference. Who wants to read that every day?

Today's luncheon strikes me as a bit different. Democratic leaders of the Senate invited the bloggers so they could talk to the lawmakers, not the other way around. It gets to that whole "conversation" and "listening" thing that Democratic presidential candidates keep emphasizing. And the luncheon was before a much broader group than one or a few lawmakers at a blog briefing.

I don't see bias in mentioning that development; I see sound news judgment.

Posted by Danny at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

Amanda Congdon, a video blogger who has bee doing work for ABC News since late last year, is catching heat this week over some online video advertisements she created for Du Pont on the side.

Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times story on the controversy, including a quote from Congdon:

While Congdon said that her reported pieces may qualify as "acts of journalism," she maintains that she is a blogger and not a journalist and thus is not constrained by the same code as her ABC colleagues. "I am not subject to the 'rules' traditional journalists have to follow," she wrote Tuesday on her personal blog. "Isn't that what new media is all about? Breaking the rules? Setting our own?"

That quote bugs me.

I agree with Congdon's basic point -- that new media is about change, including changing the rules of what is and is not out of bounds. I also liked the "Science Stories" videos she made for Du Pont well enough to show the one about hurricane wind to my 7-year-old son, and I personally don't think her work for Du Pont in any way undermines her work for ABC News or hurts that news organization's reputation.

But the dismissive attitude apparent in Congdon's response to criticism is too common in the blogosphere.

Anytime a journalist dares to ask whether a blogger has crossed an ethical line, his or her knee-jerk response is to say, "I'm not a journalist. I don't have to live by your code." Bloggers also are fond of sarcasm about blogger ethics panels directed at the media.

Both responses dodge the real issue -- that bloggers should adopt some ethical boundaries.

Congdon acknowledged as much when she alluded to "setting our own" rules, and I agree with her on that point, too. Although we in old media have some pretty good ethical rules, I don't necessarily think bloggers should adopt them. Those principles certainly could serve as a good starting point for discussion, but new norms of behavior make sense for new media.

I'm not advocating a "blogging council" of the sort recently proposed by Eric Alterman, who now blogs for Media Matters for America. The Online Integrity movement that flopped last year and was pulled offline after a few months also obviously was a bad model.

But bloggers need to quit making a joke of idea that ethics matter, or they will be the joke soon enough.

UPDATE: FishBowlNY didn't care much for Congdon's response, either, and took her to task for not engaging in "full disclosure" about the Du Pont ads.

Posted by Danny at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

When Senate Democrats gather tomorrow for the regular luncheon of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, three prominent bloggers of the netroots will be at the table with them.

Capitol Brieing, a blog of The Washington Post, reports that John Aravosis of AMERICAblog, Duncan Black of Eschaton and David Waldman of Daily Kos will be the guests at the luncheon.

Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who chairs the Democratic Caucus, told Capitol Briefing that welcoming bloggers into the insiders session is a big step but a necessary one because of how the Internet is changing politics. Those changes probably will be a topic of discussion at the luncheon.

Sometimes that kind of blog outreach works, and sometimes it doesn't. Efforts by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to woo bloggers, for instance, appear to have been for naught -- despite the fact that she has an online team that includes blog experts like Peter Daou. Even The Columbia Journalist, a student newspaper at Columbia University in New York, has taken note of the disconnect.

"As she campaigns to be the nation’s first female president, the biggest opposition facing Clinton may not come from primary rivals or Republican challengers, but rather from the blog community that often views her as a political punching bag," the paper wrote. "The acrimonious relationship between Clinton and the blogs is extensive and problematic. No Democratic politician over the last four years, save for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., has inspired more online criticism."

Posted by Danny at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

Ed Morrissey has opened his pages at Captain's Quarters to all 2008 presidential candidates willing to post entries at the conservative site, and Rep. Duncan Hunter became the first to accept the offer today.

The California Republican, fresh back from a trip to Iraq, chose the strategy for war in Iraq as his topic. He endorsed the plan by President Bush to send 21,000 more U.S. troops to the country.

"You can call it a surge, you can call it an escalation, you can call it whatever you want," Hunter wrote, "but what the president is doing is sending reinforcements to Iraq to help mentor and train the Iraqi troops, secure the country, and complete the mission." He also touted his own recommendations to Bush for rotating troops home.

That prompted a scolding from one reader, who called Hunter's proposal "another ridiculous example of a congressional armchair general, of which there are legions. It's not his job to presume to advise our commander-in-chief on military field strategy and tactics; it's his job to legislate."

Posted by Danny at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

Robert Bluey, the head of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, seized on last week's celebration of Sunshine Week as an opportunity to praise C-SPAN's decision to open its congressional video to more online reproduction. Here's an excerpt of his piece in the Hartford Courant.

The issue over the rights to C-SPAN's video reached a boiling point in February when the House Republican Study Committee accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of using copyright C-SPAN video on her congressional Web site. Realizing it was stuck in an embarrassing situation, C-SPAN gave Pelosi a pass. However, it didn't resolve the long-standing issue of who had access to use this video.

C-SPAN's recent decision does just that. In an instant, the cable network empowered bloggers and citizen journalists with a wealth of information. The new policy applies to current, future and past coverage of any events sponsored by Congress and federal agencies - amounting to about half of C-SPAN's programming.

This is a win not only for taxpayers, but for C-SPAN, which will inevitably broaden its reach and remain an important part of the public discussion.

Andrew Noyes, one of my senior writers at Technology Daily, broke the C-SPAN/Pelosi story last month and has been following it every step of the way since then. His latest story, with links to past coverage at the bottom, is available at our blog, Tech Daily Dose.

Andrew also revisited the story in the latest issue of National Journal magazine. Here's the lead of that piece (full story available to subscribers:

Tech-savvy politicians, bloggers, and citizen-journalists of all stripes with an appetite for online video can thank political jester Stephen Colbert and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for catapulting C-SPAN into a new era.

The cable-industry-financed public-affairs network, whose three television channels are available in a combined 184 million households, recently decided after some haranguing to expand access to its repository of footage from congressional hearings, federal agency briefings, and White House events.

But the path toward C-SPAN's new copyright policy, which allows the noncommercial copying, sharing, and posting of its video with attribution, was slow and deliberate and had a few bumps along the way. Colbert and Pelosi were two big bumps -- or "bookends," as C-SPAN co-President Rob Kennedy likes to call them.

Posted by Danny at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, known affectionately as "Captain Ed" to his readers, has parlayed his talent as a part-time blogger into a full-time gig as the political director of BlogTalkRadio, an emerging service that lets bloggers host their own call-in shows online for free -- and potentially make money from it.

Morrisey announced the move Friday. He will be leaving his full-time job as a call-center manager in Minnesota and will work from home to promote BlogTalkRadio and help hosts who use the service.

"I will help BTR build a roster of bloggers for the talk-show schedule, host a daily show myself, and work on marketing other new products and services that BTR will roll out in the near future," Morrisey said in an e-mail. And he added at Captain's Quarters, "Within a few weeks, I will be a full-time worker in the new media industry, working from home, and blogging even more constantly than before."

Posted by Danny at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

Predicting the outcomes of sporting events (and political ones, too) is a tricky business. The surest way to end up looking like a novice is to bill yourself as an expert -- especially if you do it in a very public way.

Yoni Cohen, the founder of the first major college-basketball blog and, coincidentally, the press secretary to Democratic Rep. Fortney (Pete) Stark of California, knows the feeling well today.

Cohen was the subject of a flattering story in The Politico yesterday about how to pick winners in the ongoing NCAA tournament. Today he's looking rather uniformed because his advice, at least in the first round, proved to be quite wrong.

The proof:
-- "Take Davidson over Maryland." Maryland, a No. 4 seed, outlasted the No. 13 seed Davidson by 12 points, 82-70.
-- "Stanford, an 11 seed, will knock off Louisville, a six." Louisville won by 20 points, 78-58.
-- "In the second round ... Duke will knock off Pitt." Duke got knocked off in the first round by No. 11 seed Virginia Commonwealth; the score was 79-77.
-- Cohen also picked No. 8 seeds Brigham Young University and Marquette over No. 9 seeds Michigan State and Xavier. Michigan State stomped Marquette 61-49, and Xavier outlasted BYU 79-77.

The Politico noted that Cohen was feeling pretty confident before the tournament started -- so confident that he lamented Republicans could not join his office pool. The article included this quote from Cohen: "I would love to compete against Republicans, so if there are any Republicans who want to invite me into their pool, I'm happy to take their money." I suspect that some Republicans would like to take him up on the offer at this point.

Cohen could quickly rebound, of course. It's only the first round, and everyone makes both bold and foolish picks in the early going. Plus his overall record in the first round was a respectable 11-5 (compared with my amateur record of 10-6). But for today at least, Cohen has egg on his face.

(Full disclosure: I'm a Duke fan and broke one of Cohen's cardinal rules, picking the Blue Devils not only to upset Pitt but to upset UCLA and make it to the Final Four -- like I have almost every year for the past 20. That's one reason why I keep my picks to myself and don't put money on them.)

Posted by Danny at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

The annual Politics Online Conference begins today at George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, and blogging is sure to be a hot topic, as several bloggers will be featured speakers or panelists.

The bloggers who will participate include:
-- Jerome Armstrong of MyDD
-- Chris Cilliza, who writes The Fix for washingtonpost.com
-- Pat Cleary of ShopFloor, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers
-- Cheryl Contee of Issue Dynamics Inc., which has a "blogger relations" department and blog
-- Henry Copeland, the founder and president of Blogads
-- Colin Delany of ePolitics.com
-- Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine and PrezVid
-- James Kotecki of the Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network
-- Michelle Leder of Footnoted.org
-- Chris Lilik of GrassrootsPA
-- Patrick Ruffini, the new media strategist for 2008 Repubican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani
-- Jacki Schechner, one of the two Internet reporters for CNN
-- Matt Singer of LeftInTheWest
-- And Ruby Sinreich of OrangePolitics

Jarvis invited his bloggers to "Join The Panel" on the changes of media in campaigns that he will be moderating. He posted the list of questions on his mind and welcomed readers to share theirs.

Jarvis' questions include:
-- "[T]he relationship of MSM and blogger/amateur/citizen (whatever we are today) is different. We, the people, can do much of what they, the reporters do. So who should be doing what?"

-- "Let’s discuss the danger of the gotcha moment, henceforth known as the macaca moment. Do we need to be more forgiving of gaffes when we hear more? If we want the candidates to be more human do we need to accept their human falliblity?"

-- "What might the impact on campaign advertising be when we can all see the worst of the ads on YouTube? Better through shame? Or worse through free distribution? What will the impact of citizen-made commercials be?"

-- "What advice do we have for bloggers, vloggers, et al. What should they be concentrating on?"

-- "Can and should candidates carry on this new communication while in office? Will the next president [video blog]?"

Share your thoughts on those questions and more in the comments.

Posted by Danny at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

When talk in Republican circles this week turned to the possibility of a 2008 presidential bid by former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, one of Thompson's former colleagues in the chamber and a comrade in the Volunteer State GOP quickly endorsed the idea -- on his blog.

"I believe Fred Thompson should run for president," former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, himself a potential 2008 candidate until late last year, wrote Monday at the blog he keeps at his Volunteer Political Action Committee. "I've not talked with Fred personally about a potential run, so I am basing my thoughts simply on knowing him well, having worked with him in policy and politics everyday for eight years, and knowing the people across America want a genuine leader who represents them."

Frist's readers offered plenty of seconds to that motion. "Should Senator Thompson decide to run for president," one of them said, "I will finally get excited about the 2008 election."

Posted by Danny at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

Where do Republican lawmakers go when they want to start a blog? There may be as many answers to that question as there are lawmakers, but one option is the group blog Townhall.

That's where Rep. John Campbell of California went to start his blog this week. Campbell is a certified public accountant and chairs the budget and spending task force of the Republican Study Committee. His blog, named the Green Eye Shade after the headware favored by accountants (and journalists) of old, plans to focus on budget and spending issues.

"Everyday there is a lot going on in Congress that gets missed by the mainstream media," Campbell said in a release. "This blog will be a place readers can learn more about fiscal matters that could favorably or unfavorably affect their pocketbooks."

His decision to start blogging won praise from Robert Bluey, head of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation. (Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board of the center.) "Congratulations to Campbell for recognizing the power the blogosphere and embracing it," Bluey wrote at his blog.

Campbell is the latest lawmaker to launch a blog this year. The most high-profile new blog is The Gavel, which is written by the staff of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and occasionally the Speaker herself.

Posted by Danny at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

The Project for Excellence in Journalism this week released its annual report on the state of the media, and it has some fascinating insights into the role of blogs and other technologies in revolutionizing the field.

Here are the highlights:
-- "Some of the most interesting experiments in new journalism continue to come from outside the profession -- sites such as Global Voices, which mixes approved volunteer 'reporters' from around the world with professional editors." As reported at Beltway Blogroll last year, the blog aggregator Global Voices Online won a $10,000 journalism award. And you can add Assignment Zero, which teams traditional journalists with citizen journalists, to the list of "interesting experiments." It went online today.

-- "Bloggers offer voice and citizen input but have also taken steps in the last year to set their own reporting guidelines. Citizen-based sites, according to our study, have shown some of the most sophisticated experiments in newsgathering and dissemination -- embracing original reporting and a wide mix of voices, as well as firm editorial control."

-- "Alerts of journalistic failures are coming more frequently from politicians, bloggers, mainstream press critics and, with more ways to add their own voice, even citizens themselves. Perhaps most important, with more choices, the public can easily see the limits of what any one news organization is offering."

--"[T]hose the press is charged with monitoring, including the government, corporations and activists, have reacted more quickly [to the changing media world]. Politicians, interest groups and corporate public relations people tell PEJ they have bloggers now on secret retainer -- and they are delighted with the results."

-- "Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics. The use of blogs by political campaigns in the mid-term elections of 2006 is already intensifying in the approach to the presidential election of 2008. Corporate public-relations efforts are beginning to use blogs as well, often covertly. What gives blogging its authenticity and momentum -- its open access -- also makes it vulnerable to being used and manipulated."

-- "Over the previous two years, some of the long-term cutbacks seen in newsrooms appeared to ease. Blogging gained momentum. We found the beginning of more genuine investment in the Internet. The cutbacks in network news appeared to stabilize. In 2006, however, the situation for most of the media we study appeared to worsen."

-- "[M]ore online managers valued content-related skills like copyediting than technology skills like producing audio and video. That may reflect something of a change. After getting the technical skills into the operations, it may be that newsrooms are now turning to think about creating more content rather than simply importing it."

Posted by Danny at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)

Below are links to interviews that bloggers have conducted with candidates and interviews.

This entry is bumped to the top of the blog every time new interview links are added. Go to the extended entry for the latest interviews. Links to earlier blog interviews with lawmakers and candidates are available rounds I, II, III and IV.

-- Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., at RedState, talking about his legislation to require that new bills include constitutional justifications for the proposals within them. (March 12)

-- Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is seeking the presidency in 2008, at MyDD. (Feb. 27)

-- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at Real Clear Politics. (Feb. 26)

-- Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democratic presidential candidate at the BlogTalkRadio show of MyDD. (Feb. 19)

-- Democrat Al Franken, a Minnesota Senate candidate, at Minnesota Monitor. (Feb. 19)

-- Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, at the BlogTalkRadio show of Heading Left. (Feb. 16)

-- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich at the BlogTalkRadio show of Captain's Quarters. (Feb. 15)

-- Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., at GOPProgress. (Feb. 15)

-- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a GOP presidential candidate, at Power Line. (Feb. 14)

-- Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., at the BlogTalkRadio show of Heading Left. (Feb. 12)

-- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at MyDD. (Feb. 8)

-- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards at MyDD. (Luckily, he gave the interview before the first blog scandal of the 2008 campaign had snowballed into a full-blown blog swarm.) (Feb. 7)

-- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., at MyDD. (Feb. 6)

-- Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, at My Two Sense (Jan. 31)

-- Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (both Republican presidential candidates) at BlogTalkRadio, links via Captain's Quarters. (Jan. 29)

-- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate at GOPProgress (Jan. 29)

-- North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller, the new chairman of the House Science and Technology Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, interviewed at Daily Kos (Jan. 24).

-- Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., at Captain's Quarters (Jan. 13)

-- Republican Reps. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina and Tom Price of Georgia at RedState (Jan. 7)

-- Rep. Duncan Hunter, D-Calif., at Right Wing News (Dec. 14, 2006).

Posted by Danny at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Technology Daily noted this morning that liberal bloggers and other online activists succeeded in pressuring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to cancel Fox News' co-sponsorship of a Democratic presidential debate planned in Nevada for August.

Our report was based on a story in The Politico, which said Reid told Fox on Friday that the debate will not be held.

On Thursday, Reid held a 20-minute conference call with bloggers like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and Matt Stoller of MyDD. They told Reid, D-Nev., that his support of the debate, which Reid had called "great for Nevada," was costing him his popularity with the party's netroots.

Reid said the decision to cancel the debate was made in a conference call with he and state party officials.

Tech Daily also linked to the response to the news from conservative Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall. "Not only is the Democratic Party too beholden to its crazy Internet wing to go through with a debate on TV's most popular cable network," she wrote, "but they're also too cowardly to admit that's the reason they're bowing out."

Posted by Danny at 09:21 AM | Comments (0)

As noted in this morning's edition of Technology Daily:

The Chinese government plans to introduce more Internet regulations, Reuters reports.

"We must recognize that in an era when the Internet is developing at a breakneck pace, government oversight and control measures and means are facing new tests," said Long Xinmin, China's director of general administration of press and publication.

According to the Beijing Morning Post, Long highlighted the writers of blogs as one challenge. Long also said "citizens' freedom of expression would be fully protected."

Posted by Danny at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

An online revolution is under way at Atlantic Media/National Journal. I've been aware of the discussion internally, and now it has gone public via a story in yesterday's Washington Post, which was based on an interview with David Bradley, the head of our company.

I was particularly thrilled to see the emphasis on blogs. It's further evidence of mainstream media embracing new media. Here are the high points from the article:

-- Bradley "aims to expand the media company by using Atlantic's brand for serious journalism as a magnet for online talent." The plan includes at least two Web initiatives on business and lifestyle over the next year. "Bradley and Atlantic editor James Bennet are researching which bloggers to hire and what journalistic personalities would fit the bill for Atlantic online."

-- Bradley "spent four months visiting Web sites of major publications such as USA Today, The New York Times and Business Week. He talked to bloggers and online personalities around the country."

-- And this quote from Bradley: "James Bennet and I have about 40 blogs that we're supposed to read across the next few weeks where we would want our brand associated with their writing. ... I love the process of creating a culture of great talent. That's what I do for a living."

Blogs aren't new to the company. Beltway Blogroll, The Blogometer and Hotline on Call have been around for one to two years, and Fedblog of GovExec.com has been online since October 2004. Just last week at Technology Daily, meanwhile, we made Tech Daily Dose a permanent blog.

But the talk of "pouring millions of dollars into the new venture" and of recruiting "a cadre of uber-experts" is both new and exciting. The first step came early this year when Bradley lured high-profile blogger Andrew Sullivan away from Time.com and made his blog, The Daily Dish, a cornerstone of The Atlantic Online.

I'm eager to see the rest of the revolution play out.

Posted by Danny at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

The Los Angeles Times yesterday called attention to bloggers who take money to promote products and services ranging from movies and drug clinics to cameras and diamonds. Two prominent bloggers condemned the practice in the article:

"The problem is the advertisers are trying to buy a blogger's voice, and once they've bought it they own it," said Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor who writes about technology at BuzzMachine.com.

"PayPerPost versus authentic blogging is like comparing prostitution with making love to someone you care for deeply. No one with any level of ethics would get involved with these clowns," said Jason McCabe Calacanis, an entrepreneur who co-founded Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs that includes popular technology site Engadget.

The Federal Trade Commission is on the watch, too:

The FTC noted in December that ties between word-of-mouth marketers and their "sponsored consumers" must be disclosed, and that it would be on the lookout for deception. Soon afterward, PayPerPost for the first time required bloggers to disclose their sponsored status, although participants were allowed to pick their method of doing so.

Mary Engle, associate director of advertising practices at the FTC, declined to comment on PayPerPost or its rivals, other than to emphasize that sponsorships must be "clearly and conspicuously" disclosed. "It's important for the consumer to understand who is behind the message they're hearing," she said.

Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media added his criticism of sponsored blogging to the center's blog.

"The bloggers obviously don’t consider themselves journalists," Gillmor said. "But they are pretending to do something that resembles journalism. So they don’t get a pass from me. They shouldn’t get one from any of their readers. I consider the companies in this business -- the ones paying the bloggers -- repellent. They are media polluters."

Posted by Danny at 07:10 AM | Comments (0)

Sen. Bernie Sanders thinks America needs a good dose of media reform because of the "growing corporate control over what the American people see, hear and read." Andy Roth of The Club For Growth thinks Sanders, I-Vt., needs a shot of online reality.

"Has Sanders not heard of the blogosphere?" Roth wrote. "The dissemination of information is becoming more and more decentralized everyday. It's one of the most exciting emergent products of the free market, which is probably why Sanders fails to acknowledge and appreciate its existence."

Posted by Danny at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

Here we are in March 2007, and The New York Times, the Old Grey-Haired, Green-Eyeshade-Wearing Lady of the mainstream media, is finally waking up to blogs. The evidence is this ad on JournalismJobs.com, posted last week:

The New York Times is looking for a news producer to join our Web newsroom and help in the development of blogs on NYTimes.com. The producer will work with editors, producers and reporters from the digital and print newsrooms to conceive and maintain multiple blogs on NYTimes.com. This person will also focus a significant amount of attention on the New York/Region section of NYTimes.com. He or she will work with members of the Times metro desk to insure that our coverage is up-to-date, visually arresting and brings the smarts and sophistication of The New York Times to life on the Web.

The Times already has blogs, of course, including The Empire Zone (New York politics, since last May) and The Caucus (national politics, since October). But it's a great sign to see a publication as innovatively backward as the Times awakening to the power of the blog -- even to the point of recruiting someone "to conceive and maintain multiple blogs" on a regional level.

Now if the paper would just pull The Opinionator and eight other blogs out from the behind the TimesSelect subscription firewall, it would really be making progress.

Are you charging? Are you charging? There's no charging in blogball! THERE'S NO CHARGING IN BLOGBALL!

UPDATE; I wonder whether more journalists will respond to the Times' appeal for a blog expert or to this ad for editors, writers and bloggers at a new media company in Phoenix focused on spa and resort travel. You might get to be interviewed at a spa in Los Angeles!

But seriously, it's fantastic that old and new media companies alike are recruiting bloggers these days.

Other recent examples just at JournalismJobs: cell-phone bloggers for wirelessinfo.org; a blog syndication network; and a political reporter for Grist Magazine whose duties include blogging.

Blogs are getting attention over at National Public Radio, too. The "News & Notes" program has been looking for both an online producer and an editor/producer of blogs with a "strong understanding of blogging and online communications."

UPDATE II: I just saw this tidbit on Romenesko about The Wall Street Journal: "The Journal plans to introduce more blogs, columnists and updated breaking news stories to online.wsj.com, though a definite timetable for when the enhancements would appear was not revealed."

Posted by Danny at 06:37 PM | Comments (4)

Under pressure from bloggers and other Internet activists, the network that broadcasts congressional hearings has agreed to grant public access to many of its video feeds.

The Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, announced in a release today that it is liberalizing its copyright policy for "current, future and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency -- about half of all programming." The network said the move will "allow non-commercial copying, sharing and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution." The policy will apply to congressional hearings, agency briefings and White House events.

C-SPAN also said it plans to significantly expand its capitolhearings.org Web site to make it "a one-stop resource for congressionally produced webcasts of House and Senate committee and subcommittee hearings."

The network tipped its hat to bloggers in its release: "These actions are intended to meet the growing demand for video about the federal government and Congress, in an age of explosive growth of video file-sharers, bloggers and online 'citizen journalists.' The policy change is effective immediately."

Andrew Noyes, one of my senior writers, has been covering this breaking story for Technology Daily the past couple of weeks. It started when House Republicans criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- and then retracted that criticism -- for posting footage from House floor debates on her new blog, The Gavel.

The story sparked a movement to make more congressional video freely available, and C-SPAN quickly obliged.

Here's what two C-SPAN executives said about the change in policy:

-- Executive Committee Chairman William Bresnan, the CEO of Bresnan Communications: "The C-SPAN board sees this as helping us carry out C-SPAN's public service mission. The cable industry created this network to allow citizens greater access to their government, and this enhancement appropriately reflects the rapid changes in the online information world."

-- President and co-chief operating officer Rob Kennedy: "Giving voice to the average citizen has been a centerpiece of C-SPAN's journalism since our network's founding in 1979. As technology advances, we want to continue to be a leader in providing citizens with the tools to be active participants in the democratic process.

Posted by Danny at 04:15 PM | Comments (4)

Zephyr Teachout knows whereof she speaks when it comes to the blogosphere. She's currently the national director of the Sunlight Foundation and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. More importantly, she was the director of online organizing for the 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat Howard Dean.

All of which is to say that when Teachout decides to teach the online world about the value of presidential candidate blogs, people should listen. And teach she did at techPresident, so go over there and listen. Here's a sampling to whet your appetite:

-- "Joe Biden uses blog to share his policy views."

-- "[John] Edwards' blog is for a little bit of everything, largely to be shared with a sympathetic community."

-- "[Barack] Obama's blog is for emphasizing and celebrating popularity."

-- "Chris Dodd's blog is for proving that he's viable."

Posted by Danny at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

You can trust me when I say that presidential campaign blogs are a waste of your precious time. They typically contain nothing but regurgitated press releases, photo ops, sound bites and spin.

But if you don't want to trust my analysis, a new blog makes it easy for you to find out for yourself by aggregating the content from the presidential campaign blogs. Go to Oh-Ate.com for "a plethora of presidential propaganda, piped promptly and publicly."

If elected in 2008, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, a Republican, vowed to become the first blogging president of the United States. But I suspect that a presidential blog won't be worth much more time than a presidential campaign blog.

Presidential candidates and presidents have more to gain from outreach to bloggers than from actually blogging themselves. That explains why the 2008 candidates are working hard to woo bloggers. That can work at the local level, too, according to one Connecticut blogger who wrote a column for the Hartford Courant.

But Dan Thomasson of Scripps Howard News Service warned, "It is easy to predict that before this campaign is completed more than one presidential hopeful may regret the rush to the unruly world of the Internet, where the knack of making things up puts the most inventive politician to shame."

Here are more blog bits for your reading pleasure:

-- John Harris, the editor of the new Capitol Hill newspaper The Politico, took the blame for feeding Republicans the "slow bleed" phrase that has become attached to Democratic plans to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. The mea culpa, an inside look into the editing process, is about the most innovative thing I've seen yet from a paper that boastfully vowed a revolution in political journalism. Editors just don't apologize in such a publilc way.

The apology is an example of the kind of transparency that bloggers cherish, so you would think it might win The Politico some friends online. Not so at Daily Kos and MyDD, two of the leading liberal blogs. While they gave Harris kudos for the apology, they dedicated more space to bashing him for handing the GOP a talking point.

-- Recent talk about campaign shills infiltrating the blogosphere have two of the top blogs, Daily Kos on the left and RedState on the right, talking about their policies for addressing both the practice and unfounded accusations of it.

-- Several bloggers are involved in the Open House Project, an effort designed to bring transparency to the work of the U.S. House. David All, the former "spokesblogger" to GOP Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, is on the team; Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation has a meaty roundup of posts about the project; and Matt Stoller of MyDD outlined the goals of the project in detail.

-- BlogPac, an operation run by Stoller and Chris Bowers of MyDD, is making grants to bolster state and local political bloggers. They made the first round of grants in late January and
announced the second round this week.

-- Congress Blog, a forum where lawmakers, interest groups and other Washington insiders post written content, started offering video posts as an option this week. The participants so far have included: Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.; Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio; Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa; and Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo.

-- A bill in Connecticut that calls for "accountability in campaign advertising" has some bloggers in the state riled because it would make it illegal to include in Internet audio or video "an altered or fabricated representation intended to promote the defeat of a candidate for public office." The bill is sponsored by an ally of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut who is Public Enemy No. 1 to many liberal bloggers.

-- The Capitol Correspondents Association in California denied credentials to a prominent blogger for covering the state legislature. Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media criticized the Capitol Correspondents Association's solution to the controversy: "This is a bogus way to 'ease' access for bloggers; in fact, it virtually ensures that they’ll have none."

-- News from the state and local blogging front, Greensboro, N.C., City Manager Mitchell Johnson met with some of his critics in the blogosphere. Anne Arundel County Councilman Josh Cohen in Maryland become the first politico in the county to launch a blog, The Cohen Bulletin. And the Loudoun Times-Mirror noted the growth of the local blogosphere in Loudon County, Va.

-- The Los Angeles Times is sending some of its staff to a "blog boot camp" later this month.

Posted by Danny at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

Some Democratic bloggers chastised and even ridiculed me when I called a controversy surrounding Democrat John Edwards the first blog scandal of Campaign 2008. But a month later, the episode is still generating scads of commentary in both the blogosphere and the mainstream media.

Last week's coverage included a Boston Globe column by Ellen Goodman.

"This may be the first certifiable staff flameout of the 2008 campaign," Goodman wrote. "But it's also about a clash between two cultures and two languages. We are living now in both the blogosphere and the mainstream. One is ironic and edgy, challenging and partisan. The other is cautious and modulated."

Dean Barnett of HughHewitt.com didn't care much for the column, particularly Goodman's grasp of what blogs are all about.

"[W]hat really grates is Goodman’s summation about the blogosphere, that 'you win attention with controversy and get hits with an over-the-top persona and a vivid vocabulary,'" he said. "Really now -- what blogosphere is she watching?"

This week, Salon.com published the story of Lindsay Beyerstein of the blog Majikthise, who declined an invitation to blog for Edwards -- in large part for the reasons that created the controversy.

"I tried to explain this [to an Edwards staffer] as delicately and clearly as I could: A-list polemicists are popular because they say things you don't hear on television," Beyerstein said. "The blogosphere isn't just 'The Situation Room' with swear words, it's a space for writers to explore ideas that are outside the bounds of mainstream discourse. If you hire these larger-than-life personalities to blog for John Edwards, they'll have to stop espousing many of the radical policy positions and unconventional values that made them popular in the first place."

Beyerstein's firsthand account also touched on another subject that won me the scorn of political bloggers in December -- my argument in a New York Times column that it might seem strange for independent-minded bloggers to go to work for campaigns. For Beyerstein at least, her desire to remain independent was a factor in her decision not to join the Edwards campaign:

My blog means more to me than any job I've ever had. After three years of hard work, I finally have a platform from which to express ideas that won't get a hearing in the established media, let alone in mainstream Democratic politics. So the prospect of giving up my untrammeled freedom to blog press releases for John Edwards gave me pause. Still, I assumed Bob [her pseudonym for the Edwards staffer] would say it was a necessity.

I was wrong. Bob promised that I wouldn't have to give up my personal blog. He added that I probably wouldn't have much time left for personal blogging, since everyone was working 18-hour days on the campaign. But, he noted, he hadn't given up his own blog, and neither had another member of the Edwards Internet team.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A bunch of Internet staffers with private blogs sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. I knew that if I was blogging for Edwards, anything I said on Majikthise would be a potential liability for the candidate, even if I wasn't talking about politics.

And aside from the risks to the campaign, I wasn't sure this arrangement would be healthy for my blog. With this responsibility weighing on my mind, how could I continue to deliver the independent perspective that my readers value? If I were suddenly on a candidate's payroll, yet still posting my own "independent" thoughts on Majikthise, what would my longtime readers think? Would they still trust me? Should they? Full disclosure wasn't going to solve the problem of divided loyalties.

Beyerstein's story prompted another round of blogospheric debate about bloggers and campaigns. The highlights -- including a comment from Amanda Marcotte, one of the bloggers involved in the scandal -- are in the extended entry:

-- Ann Althouse laughed at Beyerstein's suggestion that only right-wing bloggers are guilty of "scalping" -- picking a target and harassing him or her (or the employer) until they resign or are forced out of the public eye. "I have the personal experience of lefties trying to do exactly that to me -- including on Beyerstein's blog," Althouse said. Later, she made the case for more independence by bloggers rather than more collective action.

-- The American Scene: "[T]he appointment of Ben Domenech as the Post's conservative blogger inspired a tidal wave of attacks from nearly every left-wing blog there is, with liberals eagerly digging through his archives to find examples of racism ... and other fireable offenses. They got lucky and found something legitimate -- Domenech's long history of plagiarism -- but the campaign to 'scalp' him existed independently of his actual sins."

-- Majikthise: "The scalp-taking metaphor is apt. Not only do right wing blogs swarm to get people fired, they cherish [the] trophy as a symbol of their collective power and a warning to their enemies. That's the really insidious part of scalping as a political strategy. It's all about intimidation."

Marcotte joined the conversation at Majikthise, equating the scalping technique to "McCarthyism." "I suppose the most common term for their technique is 'McCarthyism,' which is to say using blacklisting as a way to take away protected rights. Okay, you technically have the right to free speech and free association, but thanks to blacklisting, you only have that right if you're willing to give up eating."

-- Right Wing News: "If anything, blogs on the right have gone after people like Dan Rather, Trent Lott, and Amanda Marcotte for things they've specifically said or done as opposed to going, "I don't agree with them politically, so let's dig up something to nail them with," which is what both sides of the blogosphere do to politicians."

-- Andrew Sullivan: "Personally, I'm all for making life difficult for bloggers who have whored themselves out as paid propagandists for campaigns. But it's always best just to expose ugliness and dishonesty, not punish it."

-- And before Beyerstein's article was published at Salon, Mark Schmitt offered this thought on campaign bloggers at TPMCafe: "The bloggers' voice can be vulgar, can be fierce, can be wonky ... can be satirical, can be critical of its own favored candidates. But that voice cannot be and should not be the voice of the campaign itself. The candidates who will take advantage of the new politics are those who can let go and live with those voices on the outside, whether bloggers or field organizers."

Posted by Danny at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

The Conservative Political Action Conference began here in Washington today, and plenty of bloggers are on the scene to cover it.

The Heritage Foundation's Robert Bluey, who heads the group's Center for Media and Public Policy (of which I am an advisory board member), published an early list of the credentialed bloggers. Bluey also is the man behind the CPAC Bloggers Blog, which is a portal to coverage by various bloggers.

An early favorite among the bloggers: Sen. Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who recently hired away blogger Tim Chapman from the job Bluey now holds.

An early target of at least one blogger: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose hiring of blogosphere friend Patrick Ruffini didn't win him any points with leading conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. She scolded Giuliani, at this point still an unofficial GOP presidential candidate, for not making time to talk with bloggers while he is at CPAC:

"If I were a smarter politician trying to convince grassroots conservatives that I really do want their votes, I might, I dunno, make some time to talk with them -- and not just at them," Malkin wrote. "Alas, Giuliani has chosen not to get his hands dirty. By contrast, Newt Gingrich's communications director e-mailed tonight that Gingrich is making himself available to bloggers on Friday morning (he doesn't speak until Saturday)."

Posted by Danny at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)