It won’t happen this election season in Australia, but bloggers are joining the mainstream in the US. According to Wired News in this story “Blogging against Convention” the Democrats have invited 35 bloggers in to cover their convention. The Dems even have their own official blogger, Eric Schnure.
Amongst those invited one, “Wonkette”, otherwise known as Ana Marie Cox is cross-dressing as AAP’s on air reporter.
This marks the mainstreaming of the Internet into politics. The US Democrats have been more adept at using websites in this election cycle starting with Moveon.org, and the various Howard Dean blogs, like Dean for America than the Republicans.
Political blogging in the US is gigabits ahead of Australia. One of the few doing anything with blogs is Malcolm Turnbull who is running one from his Turnbull for Wentworth. It has a particularly competitive constituent mention per paragraph ratio of around 1:2 and the headlines are well-written, perhaps reflecting the fact that Turnbull is in fact a mainstream journalist making the seachange move to the iconclastic waves of blogdom. (BTW, heard a revealing line from the Turnbull/King preselection stoush. Apparently Peter King’s supporters were saying that while King might not have set Wentworth alight, Turnbull will probably burn it down. Boom Boom.)
Of course, On Line Opinion is up with the best in the world. We will be covering the federal election via blog, as we did the Queensland state election and just so we have a broad coverage, we’re looking for some extra bloggers to add their input. If you’re interested, just drop me a line. I’m particularly interested in party operators who might be prepared to give us a jaundiced and opinionated take on the machinations of the day, although you’ll have to use your own name.