By PHK
You have to give The New York Times credit for sending not only Adam Nagourney, its veteran political correspondent, but also celebrity columnist Maureen Dowd to cover the Daily Kos convention of about 1,000 liberal bloggers of all ages being held in Las Vegas this weekend. Only the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli took the conference as seriously as they did - as far as I can see. A Los Angeles Times blogger mistakenly pooh-poohed it, the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune fail to cover the conference at all and the usually far more blog savvy WaPo is only covering it – well by one of its bloggers.
The interesting thing about the WaPo coverage though is that it allows for responses – and they’re there hot and heavy. From what I read the comments on WaPo blogger Chris Cizzilla’s reports range from the astute to the ridiculous with a number of hostile and grudgingly unhelpful conservative comments tossed in. There is also a recommendation to tune into C-Span for anyone who wants to see the sessions live. But the potpourri – or perhaps cacophony – of opinions expressed is a gauge of the complex and troubled political opinion in these United States these days.
Have only Nagourney, Dowd and Garofoli caught on that the center-left blogosphere is developing a power of its own? Is the often slow-off-the-mark NYT rethinking its political campaign coverage to include blogs this election season? Looks like it. The Daily Kos convention in Vegas has a national attendance as well as a far larger stay-at-home audience trying to follow it. The convention has not only attracted politically active, concerned and frustrated Americans who have finally found an outlet for their views, but they and other similarly minded blogs and bloggers who did not attend this year may well be in positions to influence the vote come November.
Even if the number of voters each one influences is small: In a tight election, a very few votes can change an outcome.
How much the Daily Kos and other Democratically-leaning blogs will play in making – or breaking – candidates remains to be seen. Nagourney, Dowd and Cillizza are right to raise that question.
But let’s face it, the Internet and the blogosphere have – as Nagourney points out – ushered in thus far the only effective way around the conservative stranglehold on this country’s MSM and the increasingly failed and unpopular policies it – and particularly its “on-message” right wing radio commentators – support, play, and replay over and over again to heartland America.
Several Democratic Presidential hopefuls (excluding Senator Clinton who, in any event, is not popular with the YearlyKossacks), Senate minority leader Nevada Senator Harry Reid, and DNC Chair Howard Dean have decided to pay attention. That’s why they are in Vegas this weekend. Some are on the speakers’ rostrum. This suggests that at least the progressive wing of the party has come to recognize the importance of this under-heard, lesser known but fiercely participatory audience whose most successful members are becoming celebrities in their own right.
So Richard Abowitz and your “Movable Buffet” blog in the LA Times think about your coverage real hard. Las Vegas may be playing host to any number of conventions – like E-bay and the truckers – that draw far larger numbers of attendees.
Maybe too you’d much prefer to spend your time with Andrew Lloyd Weber, but I think you’re way off track to miss the importance of the Kos confab.
This is no staged political convention at which the troops are rallied and the vote is foregone: the Kos agenda includes sessions from science and education policy to meetings with various candidates and media training. It's - like the blogosphere - not just a one-way, top-down street. And this is serious stuff. This kind of political awakening and networking may well be influential in November 2006 and 2008. Wake up and smell the coffee: the NYT is. It’s time for you and others to pay attention too.
Or, LA Times news editor, if Abowitz isn’t up to covering the national political scene – why didn’t you assign a reporter or politically savvy blogger to the convention? If even your northerly rival, the San Francisco Chronicle, can, it shouldn’t be all that difficult for the LA Times.