State of the blogs

Published January 26, 2004 10:00PM (EST)

Minnesota Public Radio aired a national live call-in program Sunday night on The Blogging of the President 2004 with host Christopher Lydon. Political blogging luminaries such as Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall and Atrios participated. MPR says: "The Web-journaling phenomenon of blogging (Web logging) has generated a new wave of pundits, commentators, and journalists who are influencing audiences outside the confines of traditional media. Some bloggers are becoming international online celebrities whose Web journals are tracked by thousands of avid followers who then comment upon, link to, and forward the content to others in the online community. These looping processes operate against the tide of traditional print and broadcast channels and are changing the face of information exchange."

You can listen to the 2-hour broadcast on the MPR site. Naturally, a blogger blogged the broadcast, so you can read a rough transcript.

The Blogging of the President site also has the latest numbers on which candidates are being blogged about the most. "The fallout from the Iowa caucuses has lead to a near-equalization of the market share among the four leading candidates in terms of blog posts mentioning the candidates. Posts mentioning Howard Dean have decreased linearly in the last three weeks, while posts about Kerry and especially Edwards have grown dramatically."


By Geraldine Sealey

Geraldine Sealey is senior news editor at Salon.com.

MORE FROM Geraldine Sealey


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