NYT: Lamont campaign harnesses bloggers' "energy, anger, muckraking zeal"

[DeepModem Mom]

In Connecticut Race, Bloggers Are Throwing Curves and Spitballs
By MIKE McINTIRE and JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: August 4, 2006

....This (the Halliburton stock issue) was one example of how the Lamont campaign tried to harness the energy, anger and muckraking zeal of an expanding network of blogs in its effort to unseat Mr. Lieberman, the three-term senator. Dozens of liberal and antiwar bloggers, some of them from across the country but many others in Connecticut, have rallied to Mr. Lamont’s cause. In their blogs — a frequent publication of personal thoughts and Web links, often done chronologically — they file daily posts attacking, investigating or just tweaking Mr. Lieberman while spreading a pro-Lamont message.

And Mr. Lamont has tried to make the most of their embrace. His Web site links to 17 friendly blogs, and his consultants communicate daily with as many as 150 bloggers who offer advice, pass on intelligence, encourage campaign contributions and sometimes leave their computers long enough to pester Mr. Lieberman at campaign events.

But the results for Mr. Lamont have not always been what his campaign would have wanted. This week, the blogger who broke the news of Mr. Lieberman’s Halliburton stock posted a doctored image of the senator in blackface on The Huffington Post, stirring an outcry and prompting an embarrassed Lamont campaign to ask her to remove it. Lieberman supporters seized on the image, pointing out that the blogger, Jane Hamsher, has been closely involved in the Lamont campaign, even driving the campaign manager on Monday to New York for Mr. Lamont’s appearance on “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central.

This blogging exemplified the risks posed by what has become the new frontier in campaign warfare. Yesterday, the Daily Kos blog, which supports Mr. Lamont, contained numerous comments about the blackface incident, including a complaint about how well-intentioned bloggers can disrupt a campaign....

***

For all the pros and cons, the influence of bloggers has become such an article of faith that most serious candidates hire consultants to create blogs and coordinate with other bloggers. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York recently hired Peter Daou, who worked for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004, as a “blog adviser to facilitate and expand her relationship” with the blogging community, as Mr. Daou described it on his own blog, The Daou Report....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/nyregion/04blogs.html

[skids]

1. Sorry, establishmentarianists.

Using the "evil blogger" boogeyman isn't going to be worth even a fraction of a point in the polls.