Blogging Iowa

The Daily Kos, a liberal weblog that's been receiving a lot of press attention recently, announced today that the site will have two people in Iowa, blogging the caucus this weekend.

This may give us an early peek into how blog coverage will stack up against traditional news coverage, in advance of blogger Josh Marshall's coverage of the New Hampshire primaries.

Does Daily Kos count as the press?

Well, he's heard some of the same criticisms frequently levelled at the "traditional media." For example, his open support of Howard Dean and his paid work for the Dean campaign have prompted some readers to question the objectivity of his analyses.

In general, though, it looks like this campaign will be an excellent glimpse at how blogs may influence or practice journalism. There are bloggers "adopting" journalists, scouring the work of individual reporters for signs of bias or inaccuracy. Bloggers are showing up in Slate's "Today's Papers" column. Something's happening. And we're watching.

Comments

[Dubya]

Hi there,

Great idea for a blog! Just one question -- what's with the order of your "Running for President" sidebar column to the right?

It would seem less partisan if you listed the candidates in alphabetical order instead of Bush first, everyone else jumbled after him.

Unless this is a Republican weblog afterall?

[Jay Rosen]

The site, "Blogging of the President, 2004: Notes on the Transformation" (BOP) also has coverage from Iowa, with longtime public radio host Chris Lydon, plus other correspondents, writing in from Iowa this week.

This weblog (I am co-editor, with Lydon, Matt Stoller and others) exists to track the small and large transformations that are underway in campaigning, due to new uses of the Internet.

It also has more traditional political commentary and press critique, but from a perspective that what's happening in 2004 is not your normal cycle of change. It's different.

BOP: http://www.bopnews.com/

First person account from a canvasser for Dean:
http://www.bopnews.com/archives/000163.html#000163

Cheers, everyone.

[Matt]

Dubya,

Thanks for calling our attention to that. We've set the order of the candidates so it's alphabetical by first name. Slightly random, but less so than before, I hope.