The Explosion of Political Blogging - 2000-2002
Blogging as we know it today was born between the end of the 2000 and 2002 elections.
In November 2000, a journalist named Joshua Micah Marshall created a blog Talking Points Memo to discuss the disputed 2000 election. Andrew Sullivan, a former editor of the New Republic, reportedly began blogging in late 2000; the first posts in his archive date from January 2001. "Atrios" (a then-anonymous professor named Duncan Black) created Eschaton in April 2001, pondering with his second post "I wonder how long it will be until literally dozens of people are reading this on an almost monthly basis." Jerome Armstrong created MyDD in June 2001 to discuss a special congressional election, and expanded it in 2002 to cover a wider range of political topics. Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, created Instapundit in August 2001. An army veteran named Markos Moulitsas Zúniga started Daily Kos in May 2002 with the defiant statement "I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies."
When the Dean campaign created Blog For America in March 2003, as Johnny discusses below, it was the first blog of any presidential campaign. The political blog had its precursors in sites like The Drudge Report and Free Republic, but political blogging as we know it was created after 2000.
Blogs had a major impact on national politics for the first time in December 2002, after Trent Lott commented that if the country had voted for segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." Lott made his comments on December 5 with minimal reaction in the mainstream press (with a December 7 Washington Post story as a notable exception). By December 7, Josh Marshall was reporting that the mainstream media seemed to have little interest in the story. During the following week, Marshall, Atrios, and others uncovered Lott's other pro-segregation statements throughout his career. Within a few days of the bloggers' coverage, the mainstream media picked up the story, and Trent Lott was forced to resign by December 20. Although this incident is repeatedly cited as the first "scalp" claimed by bloggers, they did not take Lott down alone. Their real contribution was to dig up incriminating evidence and keep the story alive long enough for the mainstream media to gain interest.
The Lott affair showed that a few individuals--mostly outsiders with no budgets--could kick the national media into action and shake up the U.S. government. Perhaps it was no surprise that a bunch of outsiders with a small budget would become the first presidential campaign to use blogging to force the media and government to pay attention.
In November 2000, a journalist named Joshua Micah Marshall created a blog Talking Points Memo to discuss the disputed 2000 election. Andrew Sullivan, a former editor of the New Republic, reportedly began blogging in late 2000; the first posts in his archive date from January 2001. "Atrios" (a then-anonymous professor named Duncan Black) created Eschaton in April 2001, pondering with his second post "I wonder how long it will be until literally dozens of people are reading this on an almost monthly basis." Jerome Armstrong created MyDD in June 2001 to discuss a special congressional election, and expanded it in 2002 to cover a wider range of political topics. Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, created Instapundit in August 2001. An army veteran named Markos Moulitsas Zúniga started Daily Kos in May 2002 with the defiant statement "I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies."
When the Dean campaign created Blog For America in March 2003, as Johnny discusses below, it was the first blog of any presidential campaign. The political blog had its precursors in sites like The Drudge Report and Free Republic, but political blogging as we know it was created after 2000.
Blogs had a major impact on national politics for the first time in December 2002, after Trent Lott commented that if the country had voted for segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." Lott made his comments on December 5 with minimal reaction in the mainstream press (with a December 7 Washington Post story as a notable exception). By December 7, Josh Marshall was reporting that the mainstream media seemed to have little interest in the story. During the following week, Marshall, Atrios, and others uncovered Lott's other pro-segregation statements throughout his career. Within a few days of the bloggers' coverage, the mainstream media picked up the story, and Trent Lott was forced to resign by December 20. Although this incident is repeatedly cited as the first "scalp" claimed by bloggers, they did not take Lott down alone. Their real contribution was to dig up incriminating evidence and keep the story alive long enough for the mainstream media to gain interest.
The Lott affair showed that a few individuals--mostly outsiders with no budgets--could kick the national media into action and shake up the U.S. government. Perhaps it was no surprise that a bunch of outsiders with a small budget would become the first presidential campaign to use blogging to force the media and government to pay attention.
posted by John at 1:09 AM
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