Sunday, August 29, 2004

Blogs as Alternative Voices for RNC Coverage Like the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month, the Republicans' gathering in New York City has a crowd of bloggers covering it, and blog-aggregating sites summarizing their daily posts. That's how I stumbled on blogger and Tennessee magazine publisher Rex Hammock's admirable effort at introducing himself to new readers. Without the track record and brand name of a national news organization, bloggers can offer this kind of "disclosure" biography to put their work in context. (Thanks to Dave Winer for pointing to Rex today.) Meanwhile, back in Knoxville: The News Sentinel's KnoxNews has a "Crosswire" blog, where convention views are being exchanged in a "good old Tennessee political give-and-take" by  two bloggers: "West Knox Momma, a corporate and GOP consultant, and East Tennessee Democrat South Knox Bubba." (Speaking of personal disclosures, "Momma" is married to the News Sentinel's Michael Silence, who cooked up the Crosswire idea -- and whose Web page mentions how he and she met while he was covering a candidate she worked for.) Back to greater blogspace: Technorati has an interesting three-column site for left and right views of the proceedings. (The middle column is uncategorized, not "middle-of-the-road.") It also has a guide to reading convention blogs. While not a "convention blogger," John Perry Barlow has added an interesting take on another phenomenon in New York City to his "dancemob" protest proposal, which has collected more than 100 comments. For more convention weblogs, try these sites: The MediaCenter's Cyberjournalist list of convention bloggers Dave Winer's RNC 2004 Weblogs: News Aggregator Thanks (again) to Jessica Baumgart for putting together a list of lists. For brand-name convention alternatives, here are the somewhat bloglike ABC News The Note and the New York Times "Times on the Trail" page (separate from its more traditional Campaign page). Because many bloggers use the Times RSS feeds when linking to stories, like this Sunday one, the links may still be useful for many weeks past the point at which a conventional Web address for the same story would send you to the Times pay-per-view archives. (At least that used to be the case with a previous version of the Times RSS support. Technical note: The Times RSS feeds now include 30 topics and an OPML list allowing RSS reader programs to import them all at once.) For more of GOP-week in Manhattan, here are the home pages of the New York Post and Daily News... complete with "Play Nice!" greeting to conventioneers. 12:17:46 PM

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