Time/Cox: Are Left-leaning Bloggers Ready for Their Close-up?

[Rose Siding]

.....The attendees who aren't folded into dank basement conference rooms have their noses shoved into laptops; about every ten steps or so in the hallways one has to avoid tripping over the legs of someone who has plonked down on the floor and commenced blogging in situ. The shabbiness of the surroundings underscores the diligent purpose of the event, at least for now.

Thursday morning's sessions are a potpourri of workshops intended to get desk jockeys out from behind their usernames and into real-life door-knocking. They carry such titles as "From Computer Screens to the Streets: Turning Online Activism to Tangible Offline Action" and "Down Ballot Online Organizing," and to judge from my darting stopovers, they are exactly as exciting as they sound, at least to my jaded ear, but those in the sessions are attentive and enthusiastic, practically bursting with anticipation at the creation of a left-wing political machine. Only people new to organizing could get excited about the prospect of learning how to fill out fundraising expenditure forms.

The crowd is older and more professional than coverage of the blogosphere might lead one to expect. In the session on recruiting progressive candidates for local office, there's an ER doctor, an AIDS activist, a high-school teacher and a representative from the Organic Consumers Association. There are some that conform to type: thirtyish and pale, sloppily dressed and bleary-eyed. Those are the journalists. There are a lot of them.....

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1202454,00.html

[lonestarnot]

1. Sounds...like a pigeon hole.

[ixion]

2. "bleary-eyed"

funny, I heard that VERY SAME description used in an article that subtly disparaged an anti-war demonstration that Bob Weir attended.

To all those vacuous, sharply-dressed screwheads out there I say this: get a brain. _|_

[Rose Siding]

3. This is Anna Marie Cox at her *least* cynical

I think she's done a generally positive write-up that is exceptionally positive for her.

[Pirate Smile]

5. I agree. That was the least snarky column of hers I've probably ever

read.

No slams, except mild ones at the reporters.

Not bad.

[BeFree]

4. Wrong, ixion

The "bleary eyed" are the pro journalists. Ya know, the M$M types who are there on the corporate nickle.

The bloggers, she says, are older and wiser than she assumed.