The Political Chase

Make Room for Danny

Following is a later post from Daniel Glover. I missed this the first time around.

If You’re Still Interested In The Blog Swarm …
December 04, 2006
Posted by Danny | 12:43 PM

… surrounding the piece I wrote in yesterday’s New York Times, here are more links and excerpts:

Entries by bloggers mentioned in my article
– Julie Fanselow of Red State Rebels: “Unfortunately, the story … made it sound like Larry Grant paid me to flack for him here on Red State Rebels. … In fact, as most of you know, Larry paid me to write his Grassroots for Grant blog (on which I made nearly 500 posts) and to reach out to the national netroots. I also did some writing and media relations work on the Jerry Brady for Governor campaign early in 2006.”

– Jon Henke of QandO: “Sure, bloggers vigorously criticize politicians; after all, they have strong opinions about politics. But those are exactly the kind of people likely to get involved in politics. Voters criticize politicians too, but they still manage to vote for them. I also reject the idea that blogs’ “outsider” status is really relevant. Any emerging field will necessarily consist of “outsiders” to the political establishment. “Objective” and “intellectually honest” may be selling points for bloggers, but I don’t think “outsider” is a big one.”

– Aaron Silverstein of SquareNet (and Heading Left): “When politicians hire bloggers, they are not buying positive coverage from a seemingly unbiased source. Look at my writing about Bill Winter from before he and I had even met. I was a highly opinionated and partisan source, and made no secret of it. Bill didn’t have to pay me if he wanted good coverage. He already had that from me …. Bill hired me to help him better hear our community, not to better speak to it.”

Other entries
– Daily Kos: “Your piece is shallow, you’re reaching (badly), and making a Herculean stretch to find ‘evidence’ of some kind of malfeasance, when in fact what is happening is that people who write for and are enjoyed by large communities are getting (gasp) attention and in some cases support (monetary, infrastructural or other) for their efforts and for their communities. Horrors!”

– Writes Like She Talks: “The generalizations are overused and if anything, bloggers should be working hard to dispell them — by the blogging they do as well as calling others out on it.”

Source: Beltway Blogroll