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Mon. Jul 26, 2004

Web Conventions

It’s here! The event we’ve all been waiting for! Stop that yawning!

The first of the party conventions is underway today, and you can make a decent argument that these monstrosities have outlived their original purpose. The Democrats are spending $39 million on this convention, and the Republicans have budgeted $63.5 million for theirs. $2.1 million will be spent this week on parties and receptions (that’s just the official ones), and $8 million will be spent on the same during the Republican Convention.

A total of over $100 million will be spent on the two conventions, with ten percent of that … over $10 million … devoted solely to official partyin’. Is this a great country, or what?

Once upon a time, party conventions were demi-public events where deals were sometimes made in smoky demi-democratic ways. But there were actual deals being made. And news. In 2004 (and for at least the past 24 years), conventions are four day long commercials. There’s no real news. It’s a bit like releasing a re-make of The Wizard of Oz; everyone already knows the story, and how it ends. It’s just a matter of how many people will watch it anyway.

Even the TV networks are reluctant to give it the importance of wall-to-wall coverage anymore. I can remember in the days before we all had cable (hush up, whippersnappers), during the convention week, TV sucked. All three networks carried the entire thing during primetime. The parties pretty much had a hostage audience.

Not today. There’s a hundred other channels (and nothin’ on, as Springsteen sang). Personally, I doubt that I’ll be seeing much of the live coverage on network TV. I think this year I’m going to try and follow it on the web.

As most everyone knows, this year both conventions have given press credentials to bloggers. What does this mean? Technorati has good primer, A Guide to Following Weblogs During the Conventions. They are also planning on tracking the credentialed bloggers, though there’s not much up so far. You can find a similar effort at ConventionBloggers.com. And you’ll also find a list of links to the bloggers “that CyberJournalist.net has confirmed have received credentials and will be blogging the convention.”

I’m very curious to see how they do. As I said, the conventions have largely become pre-packaged propaganda, and have always been covered by Big Media in the same old ways, by the same old eyes. I think bloggers may provide a fresh view of things.

They may simply reinforce what we seem to already know; the conventions are just a scripted formal ball, a historically functional event that has become a chronic tradition of “going through the motions.” But I bet they’ll do it with a twist that traditional media hasn’t.