] The Media Bloggers Association announces the appointment
] of Ronald D. Coleman, of the Coleman Law Firm, PC as
] general counsel. Coleman will be build a team of attorney
] around the country to provide MBA members with first-line
] counsel on matters relating to the use of intellectual
] property, defamation and other issues arising from their
] weblogging.

This is cool. Media Bloggers has organized a legal defense organization for Bloggers who get cease and desist notices. They are also working on insurance and education efforts.

Media Bloggers Association Lauches MBA Legal Defense Project * A news item at mediabloggers.org

] Remember Howard Beal - the frustrated anchor from the
] movie Network? He's a hero to Bob Cox, who has become
] one of the country's best-known bloggers.

Rattle and I are visible in the video footage included with this article.

BlogNashville brings new breed of writer to Music City

] Apple's attorney Riley countered by saying that free
] speech protection applied only to legitimate members of
] the press and not to website publishers. Freedom of the
] press was for the press, meaning the traditional media,
] he said.

The judge ruled in favor of Apple without explanation.

Bloggers not protected by Constitution, says Apple

] this is placeholder site only...the official site for
] registration will launch in early March...

A conference about blogging is going to be taking place in Nashville.

BlogNashville

] By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a
] key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew
] Internet & American Life Project in November established
] new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American
] adults say they have created blogs; blog readership
] jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet
] users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators
] or XML readers to get the news and other information
] delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is
] posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted
] comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of
] internet users do not know what a blog is.

Full report here...

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Blogosphere

] Internet blogs are providing a new and unregulated medium
] for politically motivated attacks. With the same First
] Amendment protections as newspapers, blogs are
] increasingly gaining influence.

CBS reports the FEC plans to regulate political speech online. The tone of this article is very defensive. Imagine, bloggers having the same first amendment rights as newspapers. Disgusting!

CBS News | Blogs: New Medium, Old Politics | December 9, 2004 18:59:43

] The problem is that Google News has multi-million-dollar
] news publishers scared because of the incredibly low-cost
] method that Google has employed to bring us 'up the
] minute news.' Currently they are able to scrape the
] content of news sites under fair use because they are not
] using it for commercial purposes. Once they move away
] from the nonprofit, educational purposes of their system
] they can expect to be deluged by cease and desist orders.

Hrm.

Slashdot | The Google News Dilemma

] "I think that bloggers have put the issue of
] professionalism under attack," said Thomas McPhail,
] professor of media studies at the University of
] Missouri-St. Louis, who argues that journalists should be
] professionally credentialed. "They have no pretense to
] objectivity. They don't cover both sides."

This article seems to be pissing people off. I think its good. If the press isn't spinning you you're not doing something useful.

The New York Times - The Internet: Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps

] This is in a nutshell the challenge put foward to every
] candidate and product that needs to succeed on TV in the
] modern media cycle. There's no background or context in a
] thirty second spot; Crossfire only has time for a a few
] minutes of'he said, she said' fight before signing off
] for commercial. Because this reactionary media cycle
] dominates, political culture has become deeply
] conservative and inimical to conversing with voters,
] frightened to be 'off message' for fear of a fifteen
] second remark derailing a multi-year strategy. This has
] in turn created a political pseudo-scandal industry
] dedicated to creating and exploiting fifteen second
] moments for political gain, with the only check being an
] inherently limited amount of information to exploit.

Awesome commentary on the oil and water mix of weblogs and the mass media political scandal machine in the context of a scandal involving the Daily Kos.

Webblogs and the political scandal industry

A CNN Political analyst has called weblogs the Liberal answer to Conservative talk shows.

] WATSON: Democrats have a new secret weapon.
]
] For a long time, you have heard Democrats complain that
] Republicans have conservative talk radio, that Rush
] Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and others have
] shaped the agenda and gotten people aroused and excited
] at the base. And finally, in 2004, Democrats have an
] answer. The answer is what? It's the blogs, the so-called
] Web logs, where people go online and write information,
] write commentary, post news stories.
]
] Very interesting study out of George Washington says
] about 15 to 20 million people are now actively using the
] Internet and these Web logs in particular, sites like
] Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo. And what's significant
] here is that Democrats are using this to shape the
] agenda, because, remember, lots of Washington reporters
] read these. They're using these to excite their own base,
] just like conservative talk show radio does.
]
] We've already seen that they use the Internet to raise
] money, but also they may turn out voters using this
] critical weapon.
]
] BLITZER: So you're thinking the these blogs on the
] Internet, these are sort of liberal-leaning, as talk
] radio is conservative- leaning?
]
] WATSON: Very much so. The blogs are the Democratic answer
] to conservative talk radio. The George Washington study
] says that of the people who they consider online
] political citizens, not 1 percent, not 2 percent, but 50
] percent are considered Democrat. Only 27 percent are
] considered Republicans.
]
] It doesn't mean that Republicans are not using the
] Internet. It doesn't mean they are not using blogs, just
] like there obviously are some liberal talk radio
] stations. But it means that right now liberals may have
] found their answer and the answer to conservative talk
] radio may be these blogs.

This is an interesting interpretation. The weblog community does seem to be heavily liberal.

The study, which you can grab from ipdi.org, is a discussion of whether online political citizens are what marketing people call "influentials." Basically, bell weathers who tell other people what to buy, who to vote for, etc... Apparently reading newspapers is still a better indicator that someone is an "influential" then using the internet, but for the most part "online political citizens" are people that campaigns need to be addressing.

The study draws a very different conclusion about the democratic bias then this commentator. They think its because the democrats have a primary this year. They seem to believe that if the U.S. had a democratic president the net would be swarming with republicans. I'm not sure I agree that its that simple.

Daily Kos || Weblogs are the liberal answer to talk shows.