Blogs for Bush: Updated RNC Convention Blogger List. I guess this is now a permanent part of the poitical landscape. There may be as many as 20 bloggers at the convention along with 1500 normal journalists covering a staged and rehearshed event just like the Democratic Convention that nobody watched. What amused me was all the talk about a “bump” in the poll rankings after the Dem convention. I was thinking, “How?” Nobody watched the thing. Anyway it looks as if this site will br a good place to link to the bloggers if you want to.
I don’t get the “bump” stuff. When I hear “bump”, I think “spike” – as in a very short-term event. No trend. No lasting value, or importance.
Maybe in the past, before things/people got so polarized, the conventions could influence undecided voters – but how many of those are there – nowadays?
From what litte I’ve bothered to watch, they are just “preaching to the choir”, and not reaching an independent voter like me.
I want to hear about the issues that effect my daily life – not all the partisan fluff.
The modern convention is made for cable television. Blogging adds another layer of media that makes it more personal. As CNN puts it “A new breed of political observers will be offering volumes of pointed commentary at this year’s political conventions.” Give a guy a computer and a blog and all of a sudden there is a new breed of political observer. He isn’t just the same old person with a PC and a blog, he’s a new breed. You can turn the television off now and not miss a thing. Cable television has created a whole new breed of lazy, mindless news junkies. Venture capital is now being lined up for blogging. Right now blogging is low cost, low overhead and low return. Once more of the VC dollars start pouring into the blogging networks it’s a whole new game. Blogging should become the next forum for billion dollar ideas on how to have ideas worth anything. Watch for plenty of bait and switch tactics and new economyisms about how this changes everything.
It’s just a blog, but for many it is an evolutionary system breeding new commentators and requiring new capital so opinions can be heard. The problem is not that blogging does not work, the problem is that blogging isn’t expensive like cable television. Somebody has a billion dollar idea, they just aren’t spending any time blogging. Here’s my billion dollar idea. Disconnect your cable television and start blogging. All you need is a telephone line and you can also talk with other people. My television is wireless, I don’t get CNN.