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

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.