Several hundred bloggers will cast a much larger shadow at the political conventions the next two weeks than they did four years ago when all the convention bloggers could have fit in an elevator.
Whether their presence shakes up all the careful choreography remains to be seen, but the names of many of the blogs indicate this is not your father's political media. They range from the sarcastic to the shameless, from UppityWisconsin to crooksandliars.com to Connecticut's MyLeftNutmeg.com.
Nearly 200 bloggers received credentials for the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul next week, although it isn't clear how many of those are independent bloggers. GOP organizers weren't releasing the names of the blogs. The Democrats, meanwhile, approved about 125 independent bloggers to cover their session, including 55 who are specifically "embedded" for the week with the delegation from their own state or U.S. territory.
On top of those are scores of additional blogs being written by the mainstream press, by delegates, even by politicians themselves. With the TV networks beefing up their coverage, possibly no convention has ever been covered more thoroughly; certainly none has generated so many written words.
If their posts from the first day of the Democratic convention were any indication, the bloggers will bring a much more personal, unvarnished, sometimes wide-eyed, view of the proceedings from what the mainstream media delivers.
"This place sure gets tiring," wrote "Eddie in ME" - otherwise known as Edward Lachowicz, vice chairman of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee - on the blog Turn Maine Blue yesterday morning. "Note I did not say 'tiresome.' It's far from that. It's only 11:25 here as I begin to write this, and I'm completely wiped. First thing I did after the Credentials Committee meeting was head to the Big Tent to score my own credentials, and ended up with a swag bag."
More than 400 bloggers applied to cover the Democratic convention. Many may have been drawn to pay their way to Denver - or to solicit donations from their blog readers so they could go - by the historic significance of Sen. Barack Obama as the first black nominee of a major party. But the fact is this is the first convention they're being welcomed as legitimate chroniclers of the event. Blogging may mystify many, but it's far from the oddity it was four years ago.
