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The Blog Revolution Takes Root

In the 2004 election cycle, many journalists considered blogs an entertaining curiousity at best and an annoying, disruptive fad at worst. Plenty of my peers in the political reporting world actually hated blogs and slammed them at every opportunity, and they continued to do so through the next election cycle.

But in the 2008 cycle, the blog revolution has taken root in old media, as I always knew it would. The green-eyeshade gang in America's newsrooms has finally awakened to the power of the blog and realized that it's just a new, and in some ways superior, medium for delivering the news of the day. Political candidates have realized it, too.

That's why mainstream media outlets across the country now have political blogs -- and why candidates are looking for ways to get their messages into those blogs. Some of the MSM blogs -- I can't think of a more apt representation of media convergence -- are even written by old-timers who have realized that they will be left behind if they don't embrace the journalistic tools of tomorrow. To wit:

After a Des Moines Register blogger ridiculed Sen. Hillary Clinton online last spring, the New York Democrat telephoned the journalist to respond to his criticism, The Washington Post reports.

Veteran reporter David Yepsen is one of many political bloggers on newspaper and magazine Web sites who have been getting attention from candidates and campaign officials. The nature of blogging, which enables constant updates, has altered the terrain of the election, pitting journalists and political strategists against one another over smaller items on shorter deadlines.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said that when he worked on the 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry, "we were essentially at the mercy of the so-called old media. You had to struggle to get something into the paper. With the advent of these blogs, it's much easier to get your message out through accredited newspaper channels."

Posted by Danny | 09:43 AM

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