The Democratic National Convention Committee announced on Tuesday that bloggers will not be held behind bars as they try to cover what will likely be the most exciting convention since the Beijing Summer Olympics. No, they will be seating bloggers credentialed as part of the DemConvention State Blogger Corps with respective delegations during the 2008 convention. From the DNCC press release:
"The Internet is the most significant tool for building democracy since the invention of the printing press," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "New local, national and global communities are being formed which demand two-way communication between people and their leaders and the DemConvention State Blogger Corps will be on the frontlines at the 2008 convention to help facilitate this critical dialogue."
"Time and again, we talk about our commitment to bring down the walls of the Pepsi Center and engage more people in the Convention experience using new technology and other creative means," said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. "Granting unprecedented access to our state bloggers shows we are serious about making this an inclusive, accessible event. When our nominee for President of the United States takes the stage, members of the DemConvention State Blogger Corps will witness this historic moment from the best seats in the house - and in turn, be able to offer their dedicated readers back home a first-hand account from the center of that state's action."
So let's hope the state blogger pool is truly an extension of the netroots community and not just another venue for traditional media wearing a blogger mask so they can get another seat at the table. Print media outlets are finding that many of their readers log onto their sites just for the blog content so they (BIG MEDIA) are pushing blogs like detergent ads at folks. NPR and PRX have numerous blogs and some are quite good but most don't offer anything new to the political discourse beyond what they offer elsewhere. Larger media outlets do have some fine extensions of content they mostly pass over in audio (or hard) copy. Carrie Brownstein's, formerly of Sleater-Kinney, has a fine blog (see below) on NPR with musical sensibilities that are hard to find elsewhere. Melena Ryzik's Urban Eye vlog/blog on the NYTimes also offers some great insight into culture, art, and happenings.
My point is, we don't need more of the same voices who dominate our airwaves, we need more diverse voices, with lots of opinions, and radical new ideas about what politics means in the country and how to make the public realize that they are the government. Do we really need more opinions from policy wonks dissecting housing market collapses or would we be better served hearing voices of those who live through the America dream and survive in spite of it? We certainly don't need more blogrolls that send folks spinning in an endless romp through cyberspace only to end up where they began - lost and confused - and staring at another detergent ad for the new and improved Vista Leopard Washing powder.
Image: Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, being carted off to jail in Alexandria, Egypt(Photo: STR/AFP)
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