Bloggers Make South Dakota Politics Interesting
There's quite a web buzz at the moment about the South Dakota Politics blog, which has uncovered some really interesting information about that state's "dean" of political journalists surreptitiously acting as a political partisan.
I'm not raising this as a political point -- gawd knows, I try to avoid that here for the most part -- but I'm actually more interested in the Blog as Local Watchdog aspect of the story.
For a while, everyone wanted to have a warblog and pontificate on global strategy and big questions of national politics and such.
Those sorts of blogs are fine. I read some of them and contribute to one.
But as it turns out, blogs may have a much bigger contribution to make at a local or regional level, acting as a watchdog for politicians (or, in some cases, for the press), or as a clearinghouse for stories that just aren't getting detailed coverage (especially a problem as more and more New Times style weekly rags are dumping investigative reporters so they can push stories more likely to sell the sex toys and services in the back), or even as a repository for local entertainment (not many of these, but there's a niche to be filled).
Blogs are evolving into much more than the stream-of-consciousness personal journals of the internet past.
They are becoming the new alternative press -- some good, some bad, but definitely breaking real news and doing real analysis and covering unexplored angles.
For someone interested in politics and journalism and the web, these are exciting times. :)
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/19/04 20:28 | Web Stuff | Technorati
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