MyDD :: A Blogosphere Strategy for Every State

A Blogosphere Strategy for Every State

by Dana Blankenhorn, Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 09:58:43 AM EST

As editor of Voic.us, a Drupal community covering Southeast politics, I've been able to watch the political blogospheres of 9 states for the last year, and track their success in moving the political conversation and elections.

Now, with newspapers and campaigns alike fighting to either hire bloggers or get their own blog products out there, I think it's a good time to talk about what works, based on an enormous pile of evidence.

The winning strategy is a scaled community with full-time analysis of candidates, issues, and other bloggers. The site should be friendly with your party, but not overly-friendly. If the site managers feel free to diss their friends at times, so will others. And I can't emphasize enough the need to use a Community Service Network platform, like Scoop, Slash or Drupal, rather than a blog metaphor. (Dailykos runs Scoop.)

Details follow.

The best political "blog" in the Southeast is BlueNC, a North Carolina progressive community. BlueNC has all the elements you're looking for. It has full-time analysis, it runs on Drupal, it's close (but not too close) to the state party, and it's a game-changer. North Carolina is now the most Democratic state in the South, whereas a few years ago it was among the most Republican. That's no accident. While state party chair Jerry Meek gets a lot of the credit, I think the party could go forward fine without him. But not without its netroots.

Virginia has the most active blogging community in the Southeast, on both sides of the aisle, and while Raising Kaine is the leading progressive voice (it was originally the blog for Gov. Tim Kaine's campaign) it's not dominant. Nor does it scale. Conservatives have a number of high-quality blog choices, and in fact both the national and state Republican parties have gone into Virginia's political blogosphere to hire talent.

The truth of what I'm saying is best seen in Georgia and Alabama, both states dominated by Republicans. In Georgia sites like Peachpundit and Jason Pye do the heavy-lifting for the business and ideological wings, respectively. In Alabama A Bama Blog and Politics in Alabama lead the charge. There are quality Democratic blogs in both these states, but none that uses a CNS platform, none that is run by anyone full-time.

Tennessee might be called the land of idiosyncrasy. Campaign blogs for both Bob Corker and Harold Ford Jr. dominated the discussion last year, but neither had staying power (unlike the Kaine blog). There are high-quality blogs on the right like BillHobbs, and on the left like Sharon Cobb or Sean Braisted, but again no communities. I'd give the edge to Republicans in this state, but if Democrats could get their act together a scaled community could do significant political damage.

Among the weakest political blogospheres are Florida and South Carolina, which are mainly dominated by newspapers. Here again, however, it's the conservative bloggers who have an edge, with sites like Peer Review and The State of Sunshine in Florida, and FITSnews in South Carolina both delivering good service -- regular posts, commentary, and direction for politicians. (FLAPolitics in Florida needs to decide what it's about -- news, commentary, or party-building.) The need for funding is especially evident in the South Carolina example, where a number of high-quality blogs went dark right after the last election.

The saddest state in the region is Mississippi, for many reasons (Katrina, grinding poverty). But its political blogosphere is very poor, very primitive. My favorite Mississippi blog is that of Ruth in Moss Point, near Pascagoula. But she's just a talented, passionate blogger -- I don't even know her politics. The best political blog in the state is that of Sid Salter, but he's a columnist at the Clarion-Ledger, not a political actor at all.

Special mention should be made here of Kentucky, which illustrates many of the trends I'm seeing in several states. Mark Nickolas' The Bluegrass Report definitely changed the game there, especially after Gov. Ernie Fletcher targeted it. Nickolas offers a great mix of news and opinion, he's the best in the state by far. But conservatives, aware of this, have now gone to great lengths to take him down, with such blogs as The Conservative Edge, CyberHillbilly and (within his own party) The Rural Democrat all treating him just as Nickolas did Fletcher.

Nickolas' problem, again, is that he's a blog, not a community. This means there's no support for him within the political community, as there is for BlueNC. There's no way within his site to develop other voices, even as spin-offs, something PeachPundit has been good at in Georgia. He's so closely identified with his site that he makes himself a target, a rich target. This not only provides opportunities for political opponents, but for newspapers who want his traffic.

Kentucky also offers the best petri dish for state political blogging in 2007, given that it has a hyper-competitive Governor's race, with multiple candidates in both parties. A few months ago I would have called Nickolas' political ally, Jonathan Miller, the favorite in this race. Now we'll just have to wait and see.

Let me summarize my recommendations for all of you, left, right and center:

Use a Community Network Service, like Drupal or Scoop. Voic.Us runs on one and I'd be happy to discuss setting up either party, in any Voic.Us state, with its own system. But technology is not the differentiator.
Have a good writer-reporter-analyst at the helm, full-time. Someone with firm beliefs, someone with passion, someone with a Rolodex as well as contacts in the blogosphere. This person should act as a reporter, as an editor, and as a cheerleader.
Stay nominally independent. BlueNC is free to criticize the North Carolina Democrats. If you're not, if readers see you've got sacred cows, anyone you won't or can't criticize, you lose credibility. And that's the coin of the realm.
Recruit, recruit, recruit. Judge your site manager by the number of voices they bring in. BlueNC actively recruits top liberal bloggers around the state to cross-post. And if you're recruiting, remember you need a budget for this.

Now, go out there and amaze me.

Tags: blogosphere, state politics (all tags)

Permalink :: 4 Comments :: Post a Comment

Texas & Soapblox (none / 0)

Don't forget Soapblox, which runs Raising Kaine and many many a state blog like Burnt Orange Report in Texas.

Follow Texas Politics at Burnt Orange Report

by KTinTX on Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 12:01:13 PM EST

Re: A Blogosphere Strategy for Every State (none / 0)

Among the weakest political blogospheres are Florida and South Carolina, which are mainly dominated by newspapers. Here again, however, it's the conservative bloggers who have an edge, with sites like Peer Review and The State of Sunshine in Florida, and FITSnews in South Carolina both delivering good service -- regular posts, commentary, and direction for politicians. (FLAPolitics in Florida needs to decide what it's about -- news, commentary, or party-building.) The need for funding is especially evident in the South Carolina example, where a number of high-quality blogs went dark right after the last election.

I've been blogging since 2002 here in SC. I'm a Democrat, and in the months leading up to the November 2006 election, my site, The LaurinLine, was regularly getting 1,500 unique visitors a weekday -- almost double that of any conservative blog in SC. I don't mean for that to sound self-aggrandizing, but, rather, I'm just trying to show that I think your assessment that the South Carolina blogosphere is weak is off-the-mark. (However, you are correct that a lot of blogs have "gone dark" since the election.)

As for FITSNews, you should probably talk to some South Carolinians before drawing conclusions about that site. It's incredibly well-written, yes, but there's a lot of context that goes along with it that you wouldn't know at first glance.

I run a Soapblox site, SouthCarolina08.com, but it isn't geared toward Democratic netroots-building. It's a community for South Carolinians of all political stripes. I know that doesn't fit the mission of the 50 state blog plan, but I enjoy providing a forum for Democrats and Republicans to debate and have been doing so for far longer than I've been reading national blogs like MyDD.

I'm hopefully going to be working for a presidential campaign soon, so I'm looking to pass SC08 on to someone else or shut it down completely. The daily visits are climbing, and there are over 200 registered members, so it would be something good to build off of.

I'm happy to help find a Dem blogger to take the reins and really champion Democratic netroots growth in SC. I know most of the Dems here pretty well. Over the past 5 years, I've learned a lot about what it takes to run a successful blog, and it's a tough sell even to people who would make great bloggers b/c it's such a major time/energy investment.

I've run into a lot of issues with Soapblox, and, on the whole, have not been very happy with it, although I do see its potential and know that it works well in other states. I emailed Chris Bowers my thoughts on it when he did a frontpage post on local blogs, but I felt like what I said kinda got dismissed.

When I moved my Wordpress site over to Soapblox, my readership dropped off significantly, and participation chilled from what once was around 20-50 comments on any given post to essentially zero. The number 1 complaint was that users had to log-in with a password. It's been a huge barrier to participation b/c people complain that they forgot their password, didn't know how to change it, etc. Also, people here don't yet grasp the power of a diary-driven site...or maybe they just like to read blogs passively. I didn't understand diaries, etc. until I started reading MyDD in the past 6 months. My final complaint is that there isn't a WYSIWIG editor. The vast majority of my readers don't know HTML. I know that's hard for those of us who are computer nerds to imagine, but they get very frustrated when they can't make stuff link or be bold, etc.

Anyway, sorry for rambling. I'm happy to help anyone looking to build a Democratic netroots base in SC b/c I know a lot about Democratic politics in SC as well as what works and what doesn't in the blogosphere here, but I'm getting tired of blogging myself and am nearing the end of law school when I'm going to have to get a job.

by Laurin from SC on Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 02:04:55 PM EST

Re: A Blogosphere Strategy for Every State (none / 0)

oh no! unhappy Laurin! Know that WYSIWIG editors are on their way for SoapBlox. As for the comment drop off, I don't know what to say. I've had dozens of people switch from WP or MoveableType to SoapBlox and not had any problems with the comment system. Most owners were actually happy to add the registration process because it cut down on trolls, and especially spam. It's quite nearly impossible to spam a site when you have to register to comment.

SquareState.net - Colorado Politics

by pacified on Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 05:30:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A Blogosphere Strategy for Every State (none / 0)

I think the switch to Soapblox has been rocky for a variety of reasons, and many of them have to do with my failure to properly educate users on how the site works, etc. Like I wrote above, it's hard to understand how a community site works when you've never read one before. (And I still don't read DailyKOS because I get sensory overload and can't keep uo with all of it.)

Diary participation has improved a little bit, but for the most part the people who read the site don't seem very interested in writing their own stuff for it. When I started the site, I had this idea that people would be all over diaries and writing them like crazy, and that just hasn't happened.

I understand that the log-in stuff is for security reasons, and of course I sympathize with that. I guess I just have unusually impatient readers b/c it doesn't take long to change your password to something you can remember.

I think the WYSIWIG editor will be a great improvement. For the past few months, I've been going into people's diaries and helping them out with the formatting, and obviously that gets tiring.

Soapblox works great in so many places, and I haven't figured out why I feel like it's been less successful on my site and with South Carolina blog readers, especially when I've had a blog readership for years now. Maybe my expectations are too high, or maybe the content isn't as good as it used to be or doesn't have as wide appeal. (SC08 is obviously geared toward presidential politics in SC, whereas old-school LaurinLine was devoted mostly to state politics.)

I'm not saddling Soapblox with all of the blame for my drop-off in readership. I think it's a good platform, and I know it works incredibly well in a lot of places. For folks here though who are accustomed to Wordpress and BlogSpot blogs, it's difficult to understand the fundamental difference.

I'm still convinced it can work here, but I'll probably be letting someone else take over investing the effort pretty soon.

by Laurin from SC on Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 06:08:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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