All the news that's fit to blog
Among the thousands of official reporters at the Democratic convention this week in Boston were a scrappy band of weblog keepers. As RYAN BIGGE reports, a Toronto meeting this week examines how these snarky on-line gossips and media monitors are changing journalism
From the Globe and Mail, July 31, 2004

'Security here at the Fleet Center started out as heavy and now threatens to interfere with the Earth's rotation.

"The newest example of the Democrat's nanny mini-state? They stopped the donut truck from coming in," writes Ana Marie Cox, describing the biggest crisis she witnessed during the Tuesday edition of the Democratic National Convention.

She continues, "One wonders what threat donuts posed -- cholesterol seems an extremely inefficient medium for a terrorist attack."

Glib? Frivolous? Sure. That's exactly the point. Ms. Cox is a blogger, the mind behind wonkette.com, a snarky Washington gossip site known for its below-the-beltway look at insider politics.

But add "accredited" to the list of weblog descriptors. Despite their worst inclinations, bloggers are for the first time receiving media accreditation for both the Republican and Democratic conventions.

While many still view these digital diaries as repositories for lukewarm teen angst, blogs have, in the past two years, become the preferred information sluice for political pundits large and small. About 35 bloggers received official accreditation for the Democratic National Convention that concluded Thursday in Boston.

One of those lucky three dozen included Peter Rukavina, who lives in Charlottetown and had the honour of being the lone accredited Canadian blogger at the Democratic gathering. Having to self-finance the trip meant that Mr. Rukavina, a computer programmer, could afford to stay only for two of the four nights of the convention.

Still, Mr. Rukavina did his best to harness the power of bloggery. His site, reinvented.net, offered a very personal and personable perspective on the political process. "I'm not sure I've been able to get any real sense of what this convention is for," he wrote in a posting on Tuesday, the second day of the proceedings. "This is not a national town-hall meeting; it's more akin to a televised debutante ball.

"I'm afraid that politics here in America is so abstracted from reality that it is, in fact, impossible to understand on a level other than the superficial."

Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor believes that Mr. Rukavina and others like him provide a perfect example of what bloggers can and should bring to the journalism conversation.

Mr. Gillmor, the author of the new book We Are Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, will be in Toronto on Tuesday speaking as part of a one-day conference entitled Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism. The event is co-organized and sponsored by the Canadian Newspaper Association.

"More voices are always better than fewer," Mr. Gillmor explains. "In the best-case scenario, bloggers bring additional kinds of perspectives from a group of people who tend to be less jaded about the process."

According to Mr. Gillmor, their outsider status means bloggers tend to seek out stories that experienced journalists overlook, in the process providing a fresh perspective. This kind of newbie curiosity is especially important given the stage-managed political ritual that political conventions have become, events that boast all the spontaneity of a Japanese tea ceremony.

Not that most bloggers need much encouragement. While blogs range in style and tone, many, such as Ms. Cox's Wonkette, are the HTML equivalent of the bad kids who pass notes in the back of the classroom. Political weblogs have developed a reputation for being biased, pithy and specialized.

And that, of course, is the reason they're so popular among the partisan. The Democratic convention represented a big moment for the blogosphere. The decision on the part of the major news networks to limit their broadcast coverage to three hours over the four-day convention only worked in bloggers' favour.

Political junkies seeking a steady morphine drip of facts, innuendo and rumour could click-and-dance from blog to blog until their eyeballs turned dry.

For those who have toiled in the digital ether for the past few years, linking to the like-minded and building an audience one posting at a time, this official recognition is proof all that blather actually means something.

The political blog dailykos.com receives a million unique visits a month. Russ Kick, the blogger behind thememoryhole.com, made the freedom-of-information request that led to the release of and subsequent posting of photographs of American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan in military caskets, generating five million hits for Mr. Kick in one day.

But did bloggers at the Democratic convention blow their big chance by describing non-issues like doughnut scarcity? (Both Ms. Cox and Mr. Rukavina weighed in on the deep-fried dessert's convention presence, or lack thereof.) To even ask this question serves to highlight the tension between weblogs and traditional journalism outlets (i.e. the pulp and ink you're currently holding in your hand).

For Leonard Witt, the president of the Public Journalism Network at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, asking whether bloggers should be considered journalists is the wrong question. Because blogs link back to the source material they comment upon, from other websites and the media, Prof. Witt believes that "a good blog is almost like a strong piece of research with footnotes. And in some ways it's more legitimate than a newspaper because it explains where its information is coming from."

Dr. Witt, who will also be attending the Toronto Fusion Power conference, points out that "journalists used to be the information gatekeepers. They had a professional code about what is and isn't news. But today, bloggers are working outside that code." That bloggers are being scrutinized so heavily is proof of their perceived threat to more established forms of media.

The Fusion Power conference, featuring academics, editors and publishers from across North America, is meant to improve access between those who write the news and those who read it and to encourage readers to become both media producers and consumers. Those attending include Jeff Jarvis (buzzmachine.com), Rebecca MacKinnon (blogs.law.harvard.edu/techjournalism) and Jay Rosen -- who will no doubt share his experiences from the convention, which he covered for his blog, Pressthink.org.

For Mr. Gillmor, blogs represent a collision of technology and journalism that has changed the rules for toner-stained wretches, newsmakers and their respective audiences. He said the relationship between traditional media and blogs is "symbiotic as much as it is a rivalry." He believes that "bloggers need to listen to journalists and vice versa. Blogs should be an addition to the journalism ecosystem, not a replacement."

Meanwhile, Warren Kinsella -- a Toronto-based lawyer, author, former special assistant to Jean Chretien and, yes, blogger -- believes that the medium can empower ordinary citizens such as Peter Rukavina.

According to Mr. Kinsella, who is also scheduled to speak at the Fusion Power conference, "Blogging is, you know, punk-rock media. It's Do It Yourself. It's 'screw you' authority."

His blog (warrenkinsella.com) is oft-updated, thanks in large part to his trusty BlackBerry: If Mr. Kinsella sees something worthy of praise (or, more often, ridicule) in a newspaper, he e-mails off a blog entry to one of the two people who help maintain his site, and his thoughts are on-line moments later.

Despite the sometimes lofty and emancipatory rhetoric surrounding blogs, not everyone is convinced of their virtues. George Packer, writing in the May/June issue of Mother Jones, lamented that unlike the New Journalism of the 1960s, which produced gripping narrative reportage, blogs "are atomized, fragmentary, and of the instant. They lack the continuity, reach, and depth to turn an election into a story. ...

"This particular branch of the fourth estate just doesn't lend itself to sustained narrative and analysis. Blogs remain private, written in the language and tone of knowingness, insider shorthand, instant mastery."

At the risk of sounding impolite, there were 15,000 accredited journalists roaming Boston's Fleet Center, making bloggers at best an underrepresented, if much-discussed, presence.

Still, given their smart-mouth attitude, it seems only fair to leave the last word with a blogger. In this case, Matt Welch, a contributor to libertarian magazine Reason, who recently wrote: "Even if you, like me, would sooner tongue-kiss Al Gore than hear the word 'blog' again this week, it's worth recalling that these websites can do a good or at least interesting job sifting through the vast effluvia of 15,000 journalists."