Chris Bowers: Political blogging across the pond

MyDD carries political weight in the ether

The views expressed by Chris Bowers in this article are those of the author, and are not necessarily shared by the Politics Show or the BBC

Blogs have started making serious political headway in British politics.

But in the US they are already an important part of the political and media landscape.

What lessons might US bloggers have for our home-grown variety?

Chris Bowers, of influential left-leaning blog MyDD.com, gives the Politics Show his personal view.

One of the keys to a successful revolution is to offer a service not currently being provided by the powers that be.

By doing just that, political blogs on the American left and center-left have sparked a revolution over the past few years.

When it first started attracting readers in 2001, the American blogosphere provided something that was entirely lacking in our national media at the time: a left-wing perspective on current events.

Following the 9-11 attacks and during the run-up to war in Iraq, progressive perspectives had been virtually shut out of our national discourse.

As dangerous as this was - and still is - for our democracy, it did have the side effect of quickly driving up the size of audiences on progressive blogs.

Blogs to the fore

For our elections in 2002, established news organizations severely cut back on their election coverage.

However, political activists and election junkies still sought locations where they could find the latest information on elections around the nation.

Since many of the top progressive blogs were run by people obsessed with poll numbers and election figures, the blogosphere was again providing a sought-after service abandoned by establishment institutions.

President Bush was the focus of Howard Dean's blog attention

During 2003, when prominent Democrats were sitting sheepishly in the corner - while arch-conservative theocons and neocons bullied anything resembling rational thought out of our national discourse, progressive blogs took a liking to a longshot presidential candidate named Howard Dean.

Abandoning the milquetoast habits of so many Democrats of that time, Dean offered full-throated criticisms of George Bush.

Many Democrats were desperate to see their leaders talk like that, but progressive blogs were the only medium focusing on and praising Democrats who actually did.

Going local

In future we will continue to expand by providing an even more critical service that has been abandoned in this country: local news.

Local and regional progressive blogs are experiencing a tremendous boom, largely because corporate media consolidation has resulted in a near total market failure for local news in America.

The more services the progressive blogosphere provided that the media and political establishment had abandoned, the larger it became.

In the summer of 2003, about 300,000 people were reading progressive blogs.

By 2005 that had risen to 3 million and now at least 6 million people read progressive blogs every day.

Yet it still isn't easy to find websites with no advertising budget and strange names (like mine, MyDD).

While we are providing services which others have abandoned, you have to want those services.

It's natural that websites heavily devoted to politics and political action, draw readers heavily devoted to politics and political action.

So the progressive blogosphere's mix of political junkies, fierce Democratic partisans and true blue progressives tend to be among the most politically engaged people in the country.

Progressive power

Without blogs, Joe Lieberman's political fate may have been different

Drawing together so many of the nation's progressive political activists has made American progressive blogs powerful.

We now influence how the news is reported, and even break many news stories of our own.

We provide resources to candidates we like, rock the foundations of political advocacy organizations, and even make serious threats to replace our own party leaders.

This is often to the establishment's ire, as when Howard Dean nearly seized the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2004, and when Ned Lamont defeated former Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Lieberman this August.

And in Britain...

If left and center-left bloggers in Britain wish to have more success, they need to provide services that people want but isn't being provided anywhere else.

It is a tough job, because there is very little money to be made in blogging, and you have to be obsessed with it in order for it to work.

One of the bright sides is that no blog is powerful in and of itself, and so you need to make it your business to seek out like-minded bloggers and readers.

When you discover that you are not alone in the wilderness, your work becomes much more of a pleasure. When the establishment realizes that you are not alone in the wilderness, then they start to take you seriously.

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Gill Hargreaves discovers political blogging at the Tory Party conference

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Join Jon Sopel and guests for the Politics Show on Sunday 08 October 2006 at 12:00 BST on BBC One.

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