Blogging Hits The Big Time

It appears the Democratic National Committee has invited several preselected bloggers to attend their presidential convention this year.

These traditionally non-establishment social commentators will be chosen based on their professionalism, the number of readers who check their blog on a regular basis, and how much of their content is original.

Part of this is attributed to former candidate Howard Dean who demonstrated the power of the internet in modern American politics from a grass roots point of view.

"We hope to bring back to political conventions something of the spirit of the early American democracy, the wide-ranging, freewheeling, and raucous discussions about the state of the nation and the state of the party," Matt Stoller, the DNC's blog community coordinator, wrote in his first posting.

"They're just trying to pick up on what they seemed to have lost with Dean," said Alex Halavais, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo's School of Informatics. "There was a luster associated with the Dean campaign - the luster of the grass roots - that Kerry hasn't quite managed to pick up on." Ahem...Brian's Note: could that be due to Senator Kerry have the charisma of a statue? I'm just sayin'!

Hey Josh did you get invited? You're pretty politically savvy and have huge readership. Of course the DNC might not appreciate your love poster of Tom Daschle :)

Sadly, this commentator did not get chosen as well :(