Monthly Archives: August 2008

DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Partisan bloggers building up the buzz at political conventions

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I um want to share this um video interview I did with um the Dallas Morning News.  We were just inside the um perimeter set up um, around the convention hall so you can see the barriers over my shoulder.  Um, Karen Brooks conducted the interview off camera and um wrote the adjoining article. Check both out by clicking here.

Here are a few excerpts:

  • It was an unprecedented move by Democrats and Republicans this year when they invited hundreds of bloggers to cover their conventions with the same access as – and in some cases much better than – the mainstream media.
  • Shawn Williams, publisher of the blog Dallas South, was credentialed as part of the “General Blogger Pool,” a more diverse group of bloggers selected nationwide by the national convention committee. He, like the others, raised money from his family, friends and readers to come and is taking vacation days from his pharmaceutical sales job in Dallas.

  • At first skeptical of being left out of the state blogger pool – along with other minority bloggers who thought the predominantly white state blogger corps got a better shake – Mr. Williams says he now feels more freedom than he might if he were picked to sit with Texas delegates.

  • But as an avowed progressive and Obama supporter, does he think that could get in the way of his objectivity in covering the convention?  No, he said, adding he’s a progressive, but he doesn’t associate himself with a particular party.

Erika Alexander -DNC Convention Delegate- talks to Dallas South

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Ya’ll remember Cousin Pam right? Well Erika Alexander who starred on the last two seasons of The Cosby Show is all off into politics now. Alexander was a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, and was on the Presidential campaign trail as a surrogate for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In an interview with Dallas South, she talks about her work with Senator Clinton, moving forward with Senator Obama, and upcoming film projects.

Witnessing History

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For the most part, you don’t know when a historical moment until after it happens. Sometimes you try to guess, but you can never be too sure. History was my favorite subject in school and those moments are always on my radar.

With that said, I’m not sure I would have travelled to Denver for the DNC convention were I not invited as a blogger. I would have missed something special had I not. I’ve heard from many friends and family members that they were “jealous” of the opportunity that I had this week…but still they were happy for me. Who could have imagined itwould have all played out like it did?

On Wednesday I witnessed a significant moment that didn’t dawn on me until after I went back to review the tape as they say. The DNC staffers were giving “podium tours” to the bloggers during the roll call. When we walked into the arena and up above the stage, they were on the “M” states. By the time we walked off stage and back down to the bloggers, lounge Senator Clinton made a motion to suspend the rules and nominate Senator Barack Obama by acclimation. The folks at home knew this before hand, but it was a bit of a shock to most of us to say the least.

I rushed into the convention hall with my flip video camera in tow in order to get the reaction of the delegates. After reviewing the YouTube (YouTube channel shawnpwilliams) I realized that as I entered the hall just as Speaker Pelosi called for the vote on Clinton’s motion and eventually put Obama’s name into nomination.

Pelosi let us know that Obama had accepted the nomination and went on to announce when and where he would give his acceptance speech. That, in fact, was the very historical moment when the vision and dream became a reality.

I’m sure I’ll find more moments as I look back through the pictures, video, and my barely functioning brain. Gotta run, heading outta Amarillo to Dallas.

TORONTO STAR: Bloggers bring black issues to forefront

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Andrew Chung of the Toronto Star writes another article specifically about African-American bloggers at the DNC Convention. Here are some of the highlights of Andrew’s article. I think he did a good job.

  • Slightly flustered, L. N. Rock and his colleague peer Adrianne George, both African-American bloggers, are rushing off to do an interview.As citizen observers and writers whose medium is the Internet, you’d expect they’d be interviewing some person of interest. Instead, in fact, the British Broadcasting Corporation is interviewing them.
  • Rock and George are just two of many black bloggers who have come to the convention. They’re here to watch, write and talk about politics and African-American issues. Their audiences, and their notoriety, are growing.
  • The importance of these blogs is that they are more about having an African-American perspective on things,” says Williams, whose blog title, Dallas South, signifies the kind of ethnic divide in his hometown, blacks and Latinos south of the river, whites to the north.
  • He and other African-American bloggers say that while the Obama presidential quest isn’t the sole raison d’etre for their blogs, as the Democratic candidate became more likely to win the nomination their blogs took on new importance for African-American readers. “It propelled it to another level,” Williams explains.
  • On Rock’s site, AfricanAmericanPoliticalPundit.com, he writes that he and his peers represent a “new breed of black media.” They are the “first group of black independent `credentialed-journalist’ bloggers to cover a major political party’s national convention,” he says.

TORONTO STAR: Pampered bloggers get plenty of access

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Here’s a story by Andrew Chung of the Toronto Star talking about blogger access at the Democratic National Convention. Here are some of the highlights. For the record…I haven’t received a massage.

Full Tornoto Star Article

  • Free massages. Lime or raspberry smoothies. A venue with a lot of cachet. Just for bloggers.If these Internet opinion artists, spilling their guts and brains on the Web on all subjects imaginable, were once considered fringe-types blathering inconsequentially to anyone who would read, that is most certainly no longer the case. They’re important enough now to even be pampered.
  • The organizers committed to vastly expand the blogger pool at the convention. There is even an ultramodern Blogger Lounge adjacent to the convention floor.
  • At the Democratic National Convention four years ago in Boston there were four bloggers. This year in Denver there are over 200. The golden age of blogging appears to be upon us as the profile bloggers have been given at this convention has lent a sense of legitimacy and credibility heretofore unknown to blogs.
  • “It’s all so amazing because a few years ago I was just some opinionated guy who got agitated at dinner parties,” says David Goldstein, who runs the blog horsesass.org from Seattle, and is the Washington State delegation’s “embedded” blogger. “Now I’ve got a floor pass and I find it rather shocking.”
  • “I’d say it’s advocacy journalism,” he says. “We use journalistic tools, but we have a definite point of view. I’d say (blogs) are a hybrid of journalism, editorial writing and talk shows.” Most bloggers here publicly support Barack Obama. Some have even given money to the Obama campaign.