Political Blogs winning against news organizations?

Recently a donor to the Obama campaign was invited to a closed to the media event as she was a large donor to the Obama campaign. And upset at his performance in Pennsylvania Obama states that small town voters: “Cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” 

It wasn’t the friendliest of statements. But it didn’t get out as there was no media there. But Mayhill Fowler was there. She thought it was newsworthy, but she sat on the story for a few days.

  Then she blogged the statement. It struck a chord with what many think is Obama’s disconnect from average people. The story got over 100,000 views in the first day. How many newspaper articles get that amount of attention? And this shows one of the main problems that mainstream journalism is having. Being different, being everywhere, and being truthful. 

Would Obama have said it if the press was there? Maybe not, but he was obviously thinking it.

 Being Different

As someone has checked in on Fox News, CNN, MSN, Yahoo, and other news sources typically on the same story and day let me tell you there is not much difference. Fox News is supposed to be conservative but my donation research has proven different. The rest often parrot each others stories in fact CBS is saying that they may stop running a news gathering service and buy news from CNN. This is a journalism in the new millennium? Not even attempting to be different?

 Being Everywhere

Another advantage of the blogger, being everywhere and being nowhere. You cant collect them and put them in a press bus, or press pool. They do what they want. Sometime they will be at their work, sometimes not interested in the canned messages, and sometimes in a room of people that you have selected and are all donors. 

Being Truthful

News media in this election have proven to not be very truthful and this campaign is no different. In fact I never knew it was this bad. If you haven’t been following Ron Paul for very long maybe you did not notice it but the news media are downright mean to him. Additionally they have been pushing forward candidates in the anticipation that they would be the candidate. The GOP race has been especially embarrassing. First Thompson was supposed to be the lock. Then Guilliani was deemed “America’s Mayor” by the press. What a laugh. These candidates were pushed forward, propped up, and then never struck a chord with the public. In fact McCain himself almost had to quit the race last year for lack of donations. But while hyping these candidates, the media was publicizing Hillary Clinton, donating record amounts to the Democrats, and even holding fundraisers for her. I suspect that the media felt that Hillary was the anointed one and was just sideline watching this one, while America decided that they were not in love with her, or any of their choices for GOP candidate. McCain even now has about 30% of voters vote for “Not McCain” in states like Pennsylvania.