ME and Ophelia

- - -

THE EXPANDING BLOGOSPHERE
Do political reporters *hear* political bloggers?

Excerpt from the American Journalism Review: "Political blogs--online journals featuring commentary, often highly opinionated--have rapidly become a presence in the campaign landscape. Now some established news organizations are hiring established bloggers or creating their own. How much impact does this instant punditry have on mainstream political reporting? When political bloggers bay in the blogosphere, do political reporters hear them? The answer, I quickly learned, depends on four factors: how you define "political blog"; which political bloggers you mean; which political reporters you mean; and--not to go all Bill Clinton on you--what the meaning of "hear" is." Read more...
- - -
THE EXPANDING BLOGOSPHERE
Political reporter says his blog beat Associated Press with a scooplet

In the above report on political blogs, Ryan Lizza, a reporter for The New Republic, says he's used his Campaign Journal blog to break news: On April 2, 2004 he happened to be on the phone with Jim Margolis, Kerry's admaker, when Margolis said he was leaving the Kerry campaign and read Lizza a prepared statement. "It was a very inside story, but kind of cool because you could break it and put it on the blog," says Lizza, who posted the news at 12:22 p.m. that day, beating the Associated Press with the scooplet by 11 minutes. At the New York Times, Wilgoren learned about Margolis' departure when a colleague e-mailed her Lizza's post. "My guess is that everybody who wrote about this heard about it" from there, Wilgoren says. "It seemed that everybody I called about Margolis had read Ryan's thing. So he broke news on the blog."

Lizza reads blogs "pretty religiously" and has a list of 10 or 15 blogs that he checks in with at least once a day. He thinks "one really smart blog that deserves to get more attention" is The Decembrist which "tends to be more thoughtful, more of an essay style." But he cautions that "you don't want to get too wrapped up in what some parts of the blogosphere are obsessing about, because it can sometimes be this self-contained world."