Yawn

July 26, 2004

It seems like the DNC invited bloggers to the convention in Boston in order to give the traditional media something to report about. The Wall Street Journal introduces some of the convention bloggers: Meet the Bloggers. The NY Times actually forgoes using the word 'blog' in its headline: Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps.

Bloggers have arrived. David Weinberger: notes: "A sign of the anomalous position of blogging: We are now being pandered to." Weinberger also wonders Is 2004 the last year we're going to have national conventions like these?

In his first post from the convention, Atrios promises "More when there's something fun." Um, we may be waiting a long time for that.

While the convention may be useful for party organizers and elected officials as a way to schmooze, coordinate themes and party, what real news is coming out of the convention?

While some criticize the network for giving too little coverage to the convention, what benefit would the public get from more coverage? What is happening at the convention that is newsworthy? The problem with news coverage is not quantity, but quality. The networks' failure in political coverage is not at this non-event, but rather in its regular coverage, which is superficial and insubstantial.

A half hour of actual reporting and hard analysis is more useful to the public than 4 hours worth of talking points.

Bloggers may be the ones doing that actual reporting. Instead of going by the playbook and filing the stories they are expected to file, bloggers may even break some stories. NYU Journalism professor (and blogger) Jay Rosen thinks that the bloggers have something to add: "They don't know in advance that what they are doing is meaningless."

Technorati and Convention Bloggers will aggregate posts from the bloggers at the convention.

While we doubt that any real news will come out of the convention, expect the most interesting stories to come from the bloggers and the Daily Show.