Around the time of the Democratic convention in Boston, the first such event to accredit bloggers, there was a great deal of introspective posting on what the new breed of fearless internet warriors would be doing differently from the other 15,000 media people there. One view was nothing much - bloggers being intrinsically parasitic to the big newspapers and TV stations, filtering and analysing the latest stories instead of generating them. As Wonkette emailed to Wired magazine: "Reporting is something you have to leave your laptop to do."
But one thing bloggers can do differently, if not better, than their mainstream rivals is organisation. You saw it in the Howard Dean campaign when a web momentum built up behind an outside candidate; in the latest attempt, pro-Kerry bloggers are mobilising against a conservative-leaning US television station that plans to show a documentary attacking the senator in the last 10 days of the campaign.
The effort is based around the Boycott Sinclair Broadcast Group website. It charges that Stolen Honor, a film linking Mr Kerry's campaign against the Vietnam war to the torture of captured US soliders, is more "partisan propaganda" than documentary. Readers are asked to persuade advertisers to withdraw their spending from the group and its regional affiliates.
It has scored some successes. A thread at Daily Kos lists the most recent and one firm, Carroll's Furniture of Arden Hills, Minnesota, gets some applause. "If I lived in Minnesota I'd be a customer for life," writes one organiser.
The Democratic party is pursuing Sinclair through the courts for flouting federal election guidelines but one thing bloggers want to know is where the mainstream media are in all of this. Dave Pell at Electablog cannot quite believe it. "It's these same media organisations who have allowed themselves to be slapped around enough by the phoney charges of liberal bias that they've become unable to perform their duty as a check on the balance of power in this country," he writes.
"The airing of a partisan hack job on Sinclair's stations will not only mark a sick victory for rabid right wingers. It will also plunge another dagger into the heart of a mainstream press seemingly unable or unwilling to defend itself."
The pro-Bush Little Green Footballs is less than amused but spies an opportunity in the advertisers' database. "[We] may be able to discover ways to contact these advertisers ourselves, and let them know that we want them to support Sinclair's constitutionally protected right to free speech," it suggests. A little closer to newsblog's own heart, LGF has a similar plan for the Guardian's letter writing campaign to the undecided voters of Clark County, Ohio. "Make sure to go to the Guardian site and sign up for one of the addresses of the voters. That way it will be removed from being given to the wacko libs," reads the first first comment. "Then, if you are so moved, write a letter to the person urging them to vote for President Bush. We can turn this against the Guardian and the unscrupulous liberals."
Unscrupulous or not, weblogs are sure to use these next six weeks to see how much power they really have.
