DNC is the most covered media event in Democrat’s history — by bloggers!

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Wired covers the fact that the 2008 Democratic National Convention is the most covered media event in their party’s history – by bloggers!:

This year’s convention sees multiple firsts in technological innovations for the quadrennial political party gathering. For starters, the Democratic National Convention Committee is providing bloggers (and floor delegates) with “video-upload booths” where they can upload their footage to YouTube or any other online-video platform.

The DNC is using text messaging and streaming video to keep delegates (and those following along at home) up to date.

Their story also contains great hi-rez photos of the DNC setup along with discussions of other technologies and support that are in place for bloggers covering the convention.

Will 2008 be the year of the political blogger?

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With a US Presidential Election this fall, along with 1/3rd of the Senate up for re-election, and the entire House of Representatives, could 2008 truly be the year of the political blogger?

The New York Times certainly thinks so:

Beginning Monday, hundreds of bloggers will descend on Denver to see Barack Obama accept his party’s nomination. Next week, hundreds more will travel to St. Paul to witness John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. But now these online partisans, many of whom are self-financed, must contend with all the logistical and financial hurdles just to get there — not to mention the party politics happening behind the scenes.

This year, both parties understand the need to have greater numbers of bloggers attend. While many Americans may watch only prime-time television broadcasts of the convention speeches, party officials also recognize the ability of bloggers to deliver minute-by-minute coverage of each day’s events to a niche online audience.

To put this into perspective, the 2004 DNC in Boston credentialed only around twelve bloggers. This year, hundreds of bloggers have been credentialed at both convention. The micro-coverage from the smaller blogs and in-depth coverage provided by the larger blogs is going to elevate the artform of political blogging to a whole new level.

I can’t wait to watch..

Simon Owens profiles bloggers covering next week’s DNC in Denver

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Following up to yesterday’s post about Google sponsoring a large bloggers venue at both the DNC and RNC political conventions over the next few weeks, Simon Owens, writing at PBS’s Mediashift blog, profiles some of the bloggers that will be covering next week’s DNC convention in Denver, Colorado.

Here’s a look at blogger Tracy Viselli:

“I really want to focus on some of our local or state stories,” Viselli told me. “For instance, not only is Nevada a swing state, my county is considered the swing county in the state. Also, we have the possibility of electing our first all-female congressional delegation, which is really exciting.”

She explained that her “over-arching narrative” at the Big Tent will be written from the point of view of a female progressive blogger from a swing state, a fact that she believes gives her a unique perspective.

A great post that looks in-depth at the upcoming political conventions. We’ve come a long way from 12 bloggers at the 2004 DNC to a huge facility for bloggers in 2008. What impact might they have on the upcoming election?