D.D. 11/22/05

Politics and Technology blog has a profile on state and local blogging in politics, particular in the coming 2006 elections. They cite the Roll Call:

But if 2004 belonged to the national political blogs, 2006 might well be the cycle of the local political blog. These blogs specialize in state or local political coverage, and while these smaller, non-national political blogs may not have the resources -- financial or otherwise -- of the well-known titans of the blogosphere, many are starting to gain a following, not to mention the respect of state and local media outlets and politicians.

While the big blogs continue to eat up innovative blogads revenue, the local blogs are important not because of the number of hits that they get, but because of the audience of those hits. "Though readership is tiny for local political blogs, the Nevada Democrats' spokeswoman Kirsten Searer makes the critical point:"

"The beauty of bloggers is they have an audience of the right people. If they break news, then insiders in politics and mainstream media are likely to pick it up."

The author at P&T says that Republicans have missed the point in understanding smaller political blogs by emphasizing that only strict partisans read blogs. A point I have tried to make all along is that the sustained political buzz of the blogosphere both feeds and feeds off of the mainstream media. The audience of statewide and local blogs is doubtlessly highly concentrated when compared to large national blogs like Kos or Instapundit, but local and state blogging is much more likely to have a quality audience full of political insiders. This group of political insiders, includes of course, the mainstream media- which makes blogs a valuable PR tool in increasing buzz enough for mainstream media to be more likely to pick up a particularly good story.

The post also cites this link: leftyblogs.com -- an aggregation site that tracks posts by state and local blogs favoring Democrats. Republicans desperately need something similar. (I should note -- and P&T blog should as well- in the interest of disclosure, that the lefyblogs.com site and P&T blog are run by the same folks- Mandate Media)