Category: politics

At Yearly Kos I kept hearing that local blogging is where it’s at. There were two panels and a caucus on “state-local blogging.” The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “Local blogs are key to future of politics.” People are learning that the smaller the area represented, the more impact each constituent has (as was also pointed out in this article I blogged about last week).

And yet, there was hardly a mention of county or municipal politics at Yearly Kos, other than how to work with local Democratic Parties. I’m certainly not opposed to advocacy targeting state and federal reps – in fact BlueNC.com does a great job of this and more power to them and their brethren across the country – but I think that truly local politics transcends party and hinges much more on individual relationships and reputations in a way that even state house races really don’t.

Accordingly, local blogging also has much to do with the authority and connections of the author. If I had started OrangePolitics under a pseudonym, not many people would have read it and even less would care what I had to say. The elected officials and other people I blog about are often my friends, or at least people I am likely to see at the grocery store. We all have to remember to treat each other as human so we can get along for the next few decades.

Another big difference is in publicity, the ostensible topic of one of the panels I was on at yKos. When we are writing on OrangePolitics, we are writing to the people of Orange County, NC. That is our solitary audience. Almost every method available for blog promotion reaches out to people irrespective of location. I can think of a few exceptions, like Facebook’s regional networks, but for the most part these tools feel sort of irrelevant to me. Links from national sources like LeftyBlogs.com may help with Google Ranking, but how likely are people in my county to go looking to a national source for local information?

I’m really glad to see political bloggers becoming aware of how much power they can have at the state and local level. But I hope folks will try to step away from a lot of what they know about politics and get their hands dirty meeting their neighbors and learning about local issues that aren’t easily painted in black and white.

Oops, I was just about post some links to the panels I am on at Yearly Kos, but it appears the online schedule has been removed to avoid “inaccuracies” in favor a of PDF (which unfortunately does not list the sessions by time and day). So you can check that out if you want to browse the whole enchilada.

Anyway, here are the two sessions that I am participating in:

Promotion, Publicity, Powncing and Partnerships
Say hello to my little friend — marketing. Get the low down from successful bloggers on building readership, creating innovative partnerships, making the most of links/trackbacks/hat tips, and cool new tech tools to increase your outreach to get your hard-earned work noticed. Bring your problems for on-the-spot troubleshooting.
Panelists: Ruby Sinreich, David Kravitz, Raf Noboa, Bob Neer, Conor Kenny
Thursday, Aug 2, 12:30-2:00 10d

The above session was supposed to be about local blogging, which is why I agreed to participate. Not only do I not do anything to “promote” OrangePolitics, I’m a little bit opposed to the idea. But I can certainly talk about social networking in general, and how it’s always good. 😉 And then there’s this, where I expect to talk about network-centric advocacy principles in 10 minutes or less:

Politics 2.0: How Social Networks and New Media Are Changing Politics
Social networks and new media are playing an increasingly visible role in our politics and activism. YouTube videos, MySpace bulletins, Facebook friends, not to mention new communities like Change.org, Eventful.com and Twitter, are being used by politicians, organizations and activists to communicate, connect and campaign. This panel will explore the unique ways in which this new media environment is having an impact on politics as usual, the strategy and tactics being employed and best practices that are emerging in this 2.0 world.
Panelists: Stephanie Taylor, Amy Rubin, Beka Economopoulos, Ruby Sinreich
Friday, Aug 3, 10:30-11:30 404a-c