Riffing off an essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, “Conservative Blogs Are More Effective,” Virginia Blogger Lowell Feld (“Raising Kaine“) has analyzed the impact of the “conservative” and “liberal” wings of the blogosphere in Virginia’s elections. His conclusion: The conservative blogs are more numerous, more active and better organized. But the Democratic blogs in Virginia more than held their own through the power of their ideas.
Feld’s thoughts stirred some observations on the part of Norm Leahy (“One Man’s Trash“): The Kaine campaign, he notes, reached out to the blogging community more aggressively than the Kilgore campaign did. Wrote Leahy: “While there were more, and more active, GOP blogs, the Kilgore campaign had no strategy that I can tell for including, networking or otherwise engaging the people willing to blog on their behalf.”
Both posts are worth reading. I would add only one note. The NYT Sunday Magazine piece attributed the power of the conservative blogs to their ability to plug into the “right-wing media infrastructure,” primarily talk radio. No such right-wing media infrastructure exists in Virginia as it relates to state-local issues. There are conservative talk shows — the Mac Watson show on WRVA in Richmond is the one I’m familiar with — but none are statewide in reach. There is nothing analogous to Rush Limbaugh. Furthermore, based on the limited airtime that I’ve heard, Watson doesn’t draw his material from blogs.
WRVA is counter-balanced here in Richmond by the local National Public Radio station, which works in some local content, including weekly interviews with Times-Dispatch reporter Jeff Schapiro. The content, from my limited observation, is less overtly opinionated. The only other radio station that airs local political content is the local “Indy” radio station, WRIR, which is inclined to the liberal/progressive viewpoint. Momentarily taking leave of their senses, the producers invited me for an interview. But the market share for that station is tiny. I have not yet encountered one person who heard that interview.
Local talk-radio appears to be animated in Northern Virginia — conservative commentator Linda Chavez interviewed me once, but I know nothing more than the fact that she hosts a talk show. Are there other talk-radio shows around the state that address state-local issues? Are they liberal or conservative? Are they plugged into the blogs? Can my fellow bloggers enlighten me?
Overall, it seems safe to conclude that the “conservative media infrastructure” that exists nationally has no counterpart for exploring state/local issues in Virginia. Thus, the critical transmission belt for migrating ideas from the blogosphere to the public consciousness is still missing. Virginia’s blogs remain on the periphery of public opinion, though, given the incredible progress we’ve made in 2005, that may well change.
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