Bloggers expand election coverage

Grass-roots campaigns and public involvement always have been a part of politics, but this election season has witnessed the rise of a new political player: the blogger.

When CBS News relied on questionable memos for a report on President Bush's National Guard service, bloggers fired the shots that brought the story down.

When the national Sinclair Broadcasting Group announced it would pre-empt prime-time programming to broadcast a documentary attacking John Kerry, another group of bloggers linked together a campaign to apply pressure on local affiliates and advertisers. On Tuesday, Sinclair shifted gears and now plans to air only excerpts of the show.

Both cases illustrate what gives the so-called blogosphere its power - a network effect that magnifies the impact of any individual.

Given this newfound voice, readers are redefining their relationship with the media. Conservative bloggers are hawk-eyed for any sign of liberal bias. They speak out about stories like a recent Associated Press piece that reported Republicans "booed" Bill Clinton when President Bush wished him well on upcoming heart surgery. The problem: Audio recordings of the speech show the crowd offered nothing but respectful cheers. Lefty bloggers have their targets, such as FOX News political reporter Carl Cameron, whose spoof story ridiculing John Kerry - complete with fake quotes - accidentally made it onto the media outlet's Web site.

And both sides are getting results: The CBS memo story dominated news coverage for several days; beyond setting the record straight, it spurred self-examination across the news industry. The whole thing started with a simple Internet post, noticed by one popular blogger. At a lower profile, MSNBC killed plans to talk to pollster Frank Luntz after the first presidential debate when a liberal site focused complaints about his Republican ties.

As effective as blogs are becoming in the watchdog's role, citizens also are starting to participate in the news instead of just passively consuming it. Bloggers were credentialed to cover both major parties' national conventions, they're writing for opinion pages in major newspapers, and it's not uncommon to see one adding commentary during television news broadcasts.

The most popular political bloggers count daily visits in six digits, giving them "larger readerships than the policy magazines, and sometimes (they) even have a larger audience than cable-news shows," said Ken Layne, a longtime journalist in Reno, Nev., who started blogging five years ago. With millions of people blogging, these larger sites help give the network the sort of reach that makes a real difference in public discourse.

Media outlets, too, are jumping in on the trend. A recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project measured blogging's readership at about 11 percent of Internet users. And about 20 percent of newspaper readers responding to a recent national media survey said they read blogs.

Not only are journalists launching their own sites, they're asking outside bloggers to provide election coverage from a public perspective. The Detroit News created a group blog that includes nearly a dozen citizens. And in its Searching For Democracy project, The Spokesman-Review launched eight blogs to cover different facets of the political season; six of them are written by readers.

So why are blogs gaining popularity? They're fast - an easy publishing tool means instant response, many times over, as soon as news happens. They challenge the media status quo, questioning the stories journalists cover as well as those they don't. And they have personality. Readers who like their news with attitude can't live on "The Daily Show" alone.

"One of the strengths of the political blogs is that the bias of the site is usually clearly on display," said Kevin Aylward, who runs a blog called Wizbang. "Readers appreciate that they get a different take on the same story from Daily Kos (liberal) and Wizbang (conservative)."

Response to the presidential debates showed how partisan passion injects huge amounts of information into the blogosphere. With vast research just a Google away, both sides fact-checked the opposition, some even filing reactions (and rebuttals) during the debates. And there were conspiracy theories: Conservatives parsed a video clip of John Kerry from the first meeting; did he pull banned debate notes from his pocket? Liberal bloggers spent their pixels on a strange bulge that kept showing up in the back of George W. Bush's jacket. Was he wired?

Besides making it interesting, the personal nature of a blog also makes it more responsive, Aylward said. Bloggers encourage interaction with readers, so news develops constantly and gets distributed in real time. Some-

times it's an ugly process, but bloggers say such a huge network of individuals cuts down the survival time of bad information. If you don't correct your mistakes, rest assured that a blogger who reads your site will.

"Our feedback loop is very short - we hear from readers right away, good or bad. Compared to main-

stream media, bloggers have a closer, more intimate relationship with our readers," Aylward said.

And it's this sort of give and take that's redefining the balance between old media and new.

SIDEBAR:MORE INFO "Blog" is short for Web log, an online site that typically consists of short entries posted in reverse chronological order. Most blogs are updated frequently, and many allow readers to comment directly on the site.

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