Page 71 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Blogosphere: Pol t cs and Internet Journal sm

Summer 2004—Bloggers invited as credentialed journalists to both Republican and Dem-
ocratic National Conventions.
September 2004—“Rathergate.” Bloggers raise questions about the authenticity of doc-
uments used in a 60 Minutes 2 story, leading to the retirement of CBS anchorman Dan
Rather.
January 2005—“The Gannon Affair.” A supposed journalist is exposed by bloggers as a
political operative and former male escort after asking a question in which he derided
two senators during a presidential press conference.
April 2006—Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner. With the presi-
dent in attendance, comedian Colbert delivers barbs pointed at both Bush and the
press corps but is ignored by the major commercial media until bloggers force them
to take notice.
August 2006—Lamont beats Lieberman with blogger support. Challenger Ned Lamont
upsets Connecticut Senator (and former vice-presidential candidate) Joe Lieberman
in a heated primary battle. Both sides point to bloggers as significant contributors to
the race.

CiTizEn JournaLism
Two strands of amateur journalism have begun to coalesce through the blogs,
both known as “citizen journalism.” One of these is concerned with local report-
ing and community building; the other concentrates on investigative reporting.
An example of the former is iBrattleboro, a site dedicated to the coverage of
Brattleboro, Vermont. An example of the latter is ePluribus Media, which fo-
cuses on taking amateur research to the highest level possible.
iBrattleboro (http://www.ibrattleboro.com) is determinedly local. At the top
of the site, one reads, “Welcome to Brattleboro’s original, locally-owned citizen
journalism site. Read and write your own news, interviews, and more. Pick a
local Brattleboro story and cover it yourself or with friends.” Sites like this one
have sometimes been disparaged as “church bulletins,” but they are providing an
active avenue for community involvement in the dissemination and discussion
of local news. Community pressure, through feedback comments on particular
stories, keeps iBrattleboro focused on its primary brief.
ePluribus Media, on the other hand, is geographically quite diverse, its com-
munity coming only through its Web site for its journal (http://www.epluri
busmedia.org) and through its community Web site, its blog (http://scoop.
epluribusmedia.org/). Like iBrattleboro, in addition to being determinedly am-
ateur, ePluribus Media offers book reviews, opinion pieces, interviews, and a
wide variety of other sorts of articles. Its focus, however, is on research into a
variety of politically related issues and on fact checking all information before
it is placed on the journal site (as a blog, the community site is not held to quite
the same high standard). Among journal articles, one may find work on vot-
ing rights, posttraumatic stress disorder, the effects of Hurricane Katrina, and
much more.