Part 3

You might want to check out this timeline. And click on all the stuff I put in this post.

And read this from one blogger:

Greetings Colin,

I think its great that you're doing a class on blogging. Since I'm
rather opinionated on the subject, I can't help but add my thoughts
on the matter.

Within the political world, at this stage of the Internet, I don't
think blogs have had much influence on races, including the, as you
refer to it, Lamoeba race. The primary race kinda distorted things a
bit because you had the very same bloggers going to campaign events
in shall we say a very activist way. Like the float. Like the kiss
buttons. And I think this is am important factor, because in the
absence of staged activism, what bloggers have left is just opinion
writing which either resonates within its political echo chamber or
transcends it. The later is very difficult to do.

If msm didn't talk about the bloggers, exposure wouldn't have been as
rapid as we saw this past summer. But again, it wasn't that the blogs
broke news, it was the staged events that incited the coverage. Think
lonelygirl for a non-political version. I think an analogous
situation is the frenzy we see of kidnapped white girl coverage on
tv. It's the circus of coverage that propels the coverage to some
extent, and the subject itself ceases to be the story after a short
while. And without the circus, the black girl gets kidnapped story
sinks to oblivion. So without the float, the controversy of the
float, the attention to blogging would have been much less. The same
thing happened with meetups in 2004.

On the non political front, there's plenty going on.

I think there's an interesting thing going on though with the
breakdown of who posts. Some bloggers are just activists or
enthusiasts about a particular issue/subject/person/campaign.
Personally I enjoy Lawrence Lessig's blog, as well as Fred Wilson (a
VC), Juan Cole, and a few others that are rooted in subject matter.
Yale, for example has a great legal blog too. But what binds all of
these is that the blogger is posting somewhat real time about
subjects occurring real time in addition to their regular publishing/
speaking activities. And all break that personal opinion/neutral
barrier about those postings. Then there are the unknown bloggers who
happen to cover something important to the reader. Like some obscure
technical device working with some other obscure technical advice.
Suddenly, with a well googled search, you can discover just how to do
something. To me, that is the real power of the blog, since without
the software, platform and freeness of the hosting, these "experts"
wouldn't have posted. And that resource of expertise is a deep
reservoir that has lots of public good benefit.

cheers, Turfgrrl" @ Connecticut Local Politics