Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 10:16:34 PM
A friend passed along a recent article on political blogging which appeared in the Denver Post. It is titled "Net inspires politics up from roots" by Claire Martin.
Dick Wadhams has some interesting quotes:
"There's a growing conservative blogger network, but the more liberal sites have higher prominence," conceded Republican political strategist Dick Wadhams. The ratio is roughly 2- to-1 in favor of progressives, with conservative ColoradoRight .wordpress.com and ToThe Right.org outnumbered by progressives such as SquareState .net, Soapblox.net/Colorado, ColoradoConfidential.com and ColoradoMediaMatters.org. . .
A lot has changed since the 2004 presidential campaign, when party organizers and campaigns assigned bloggers to the equivalent of the children's table. Then, Democrat Howard Dean's blog and Internet fluency were the exception. Now, they're the rule.
"A blogger is an absolutely necessary part of the campaign staff," Wadhams said. . .
During his management of John Thune's successful 2004 campaign against Sen. Tom Daschle in South Dakota, Wadhams covertly hired two bloggers to spend the election season attacking the local media. He said they were so ruthless, they altered campaign coverage at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
The article is a rebuke to the editors of the Gazette Telegraph which seems to have an editorial policy of denial about the possibilities and the power of the net.
It also explains why Colorado Media Matters has been so effective in making the coverage of the two Denver Papers so decidedly left wing.