Sun Article on Howard County Bloggers Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Tomorrow's Baltimore Sun contains an article on page 6A regarding four Howard County blogers - Democrats Ian Kennedy and Evan Coren and Republicans Dave Wissing and David Keelan who have teamed up to construct an online question and answer session for the general election.

Several points.

1) This is excellent news, and represents exactly the sort of blogging cooperation that Maryland needs more of. This was the purpose of my recent diary on Daily Kos on Maryland bloggers and of several of the recent posts on this site. Gentlemen, well done.

2) The article does not, in fact, include any web addresses. I repeat: the print version of the article contains no URLs. I find this incredible, though perhaps it is some unusual manual of style rule that says you can list the street address of a newsworthy piece of architecture, but not the web address of a newsworthy website. It does have a roundabout discussion of a way to find the websites on Google, but that is like an article about a restaurant providing mechanical, turn-here turn-there directions but no street address or phone number. The web version of the article is not yet up (will be tomorrow) and perhaps the online version does have URLs or hotlinks. I do not have the links for any of the sites except Dave Wissing's Hedgehog Report. I will update this. UPDATED: David Keelan's website allowed me to put two and two together, but I still find this odd.

3) There is a somewhat odd quote from Professor Donald Norris of the University of Maryland, who stated that

"if what you want to do is influence the election, a blog is not the way to do it."

I would partially agree with that statement, but the comment seems a little arid in light of the widespread crediting of bloggers' roles in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary. In a close race, the intensity of information, fact-checking, organizing and fundraising available not from "a blog" but from multiple blogging activists with different skills sets cannot be underestimated. Both Lamont and Lieberman know this to be true, and have said so (blame by Lieberman, praise from Lamont.) No, you cannot spin an election with a blog, but you can with volunteers. cash, opposition research and organizational structure, and bloggers can help to provide all four of those in a hot race. Liberals have tended to dominate the campaign use of blogs to date, just as conservatives have had an edge in talk radio for a long time but neither comparative advantage is set in stone. If liberal bloggers start getting fired up for Donna Edwards against Albert Wynn in the MD-4 Democratic Congressional primary, as appears to be happening, you might just see a repeat of blogger political muscle exerting itself.

Stay tuned for an update on this tomorrow. UPDATE: Link added, but online article has no links to the subjects of their article. Perhaps they fear aiding the competition....