This was originally published in the latest issue of Bacon’s Rebellion e-magazine. Given the topic and the timing, it will be interesting to see the kinds of discussions (if any) that this idea will generate among bloggers in Virginia. Have at it folks! ===========================================
As the 2006 elections rush to a conclusion, the stars of the season – political bloggers – would be wise to think about what lies ahead for their vibrant, sometimes vicious community. In early 2006 Virginia’s political blogosphere was still regarded as a curiosity. Print journalists begrudgingly acknowledged that blogs and bloggers had impacted the the 2005 statewide and House of Delegates races, but there was no consensus on the likely impact of blogging going forward. No one predicted the fast and furious rise of blogging and bloggers to the pinnacle of politics in the Commonwealth.
Blogs added to the fireworks of the 2006 General Assembly session, helping torpedo the promised goodwill between the new governor and the House Republican leadership by uncovering the off-color comments made by a top gubernatorial staffer and by highlighting Republican opposition to a high-profile executive appointment. Then writer and political neophyte Jim Webb threw his hat in the ring against Sen. George Allen earlier this year. His primary campaign effort was fueled by a band of bloggers and blog enablers who crashed the gates of the Democratic Party. Those bloggers and their partisan opponents turned media and politics in the stately Commonwealth on its head.
To say that blogs played leading roles in the brutal 2006 elections is truly an understatement. The keenest political observers have resorted to doubly crediting and blaming bloggers for fostering the nasty tone of the campaign. Now, as Virginia’s political bloggers head into the last night before Election Day, with visions of Senate victory parties dancing in their heads, it would seem like a good time for some practitioners to ponder what the future holds for both the craft and the crafters. The question is, “Where do we go from here?”
In the days following the 2006 election, there will inevitably a “morning after” effect, when the winners and losers start down an existential journey of ecstasy or despair. Such is life among the tin-foil posse. Unlike last year’s statewide battles, this 2006 election seems to have generated deep fissures in the “citizen media” community along partisan and ideological lines. The ecumenical nature of the early movement, in which bloggers of all stripes treated one another with courtesy and respect for the good of the order, yielded to a harder-edged partisanship this time around. Even the supposedly more “thoughtful” corners of blogdom (this writer pleads guilty) grew more strident.
To that end, it’s worth discussing whether Virginia’s political bloggers can find any added value from maintaining a sense of connectedness that transcends fault lines, and if so, how that can be accomplished.
Read the rest of the column.
(Note to readers: I have modified Conaway’s original post, which contained the entire column. I have kept the first five paragraphs of his column and linked to the full text on the Bacon’s Rebellion website. Note to other B.R. contributors: Please follow the same practice. Instead of posting long articles or columns on the blog, highlight key passages if need be and link to the full text elsewhere. — Jim Bacon)
