PhotoDude.com

Sat. Jan 24, 2004

Politics, Blogs, and Bathrobes

Politics, Blogs, and Bathrobes – It may not be news to you. But it’s becoming ”news” in the mainstream media. From AP, via CNN: ”Web journals like Joshua Marshall’s have become indispensable this campaign season: They mobilize supporters, question traditional media coverage and feed the insatiable appetites of political junkies.”

Heavy on that last one. While there’s still much to be debated about how much ”web journals,” er, I mean, ”blogs” (I still hate that word) contribute within a particular campaign, like Howard Dean’s, there is less doubt about how much they contribute to covering the process.

And Josh is a prime example of that: ”Consider Marshall, who raised $4,500 from readers and lit out for New Hampshire, laptop in hand. Marshall believes blogs can collectively be as influential as talk radio; his daily audience is about 45,000, comparable to a medium-sized newspaper.”

Now, AP just lightly skims right over what I find to be a powerful statement of the influence of the web and blogs, as well as ”the insatiable appetites of political junkies.”

The Online Journalism Review goes into more detail: ”Joshua Micah Marshall had no idea what to expect when he posted an item on his blog the afternoon of Oct. 26 soliciting contributions to send him to New Hampshire for the final 10 days of the Granite State’s presidential primary. Marshall, who writes the Talking Points Memo, hoped that a few dollars might trickle in while he prepared to take the next step: drafting a budget for the trip and posting a fund-raising ’thermometer’ tracking progress toward his goal.”

”But his readers got ahead of him. Within a day, 190 donors had contributed $4,800—far more than Marshall thought he’d need for the trip.”

He had to cut off fundraising (and give some money back) before he’d hardly started. Over the course of 24 hours, 190 people gave an average of $25 each to surpass his goal. That’s a flow of $200 per hour. All because they wanted to send Josh to New Hampshire, just to write about what he saw during the final primary stretch.

Politically, Josh and I aren’t exactly on the same wavelength. But I admire what he’s done with this trip, from the concept to the execution. Despite the fact that on his personal site, he can and should show whatever bias he feels, on this trip he seems to have taken a more journalistic tone, while still trying to give personal insights. It’s an excellent example of how one person’s blog can contribute to the political process.

But, as the AP article shows, there are political people who still don’t get it, and probably never will: ”Larry Purpuro, coordinator of the Republicans’ e.GOP Project in 2000, said many bloggers were little more than ’armchair analysts in their bathrobes (with) no serious interest in leaving their living rooms to actually help the campaigns.’”

Josh’s picture in the AP article might make him a prime candidate for ”Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (when I saw that picture, the photographer in me screamed ”chin down!”, the best posing tip people should remember when being photographed). But he wasn’t wearing a bathrobe. Nor was he in his living room. He may be an exception, having taken to the campaign trail, but he represents a larger mindset. Because of the web, in this election I think there’s a lot more people following the campaigns closely, reading about them … and writing about them … than there has been in any previous primary season. How can that be anything but a Good Thing?

The other logic fault is that everyone with a blog should be doing something to ”help the campaigns.” Some of us want to ”help the process.” And some of us had no ardor to declare prior to the beginning of the primary process. We’re still judging.

Those wrapped up in the campaigns get so absorbed in the numbers of partisan interest, ”42% for us, 38% for them,” they seem to forget the third column: ”20% undecided.” And I feel certain that a significant percentage of those undecideds will end up making their choice with the help of information and opinions they found on the web. Or wrote on the web.

I’m not one of those who believes weblogs will make or break any campaign in 2004. But as much as I dislike Josh’s comparison to talk radio in terms of ”tonality,” I agree with the general point that weblogs can collectively have a moderate level of influence, as one factor among many.

And if you want to look at the progression between elections, it’s actually pretty stunning. Imagine if there’d been Instapundits, Buzzmachines, and Atrios’ during the 2000 Electoral Fiasco. Not that it would have altered the outcome, but imagine the public debates and opinions of the people you read everyday … now. They were silent in 2000.

You know they had strong feelings at that time. And they had the medium to express them (I sure did). But ”blogs” have moved much closer to the mainstream in the past four years, to the point you can now find economists, lawyers, military personnel, preachers, professors, political activists, and experts of all stripes, all adding to the public discourse.

Given the changes between 2000 and 2004, and what one would expect to be another level of ”blog mainstreaming” over the next four years, ”Larry Purpuro, coordinator of the Republicans’ e.GOP Project in 2000” may be eating a lot of crow in 2008. Or maybe even by this November.

Later: Cartoonist Chris Muir selected Mr. Purpuro for skewering as well.