Political Blogs

Spend some time exploring a few political blogs. Here are some blogs that may be of interest: Daily Kos, Huffington Post, FiveThirtyEight, The Page, Politico, Leslie Savan on The Nation, MediaBistro. Please choose one blog site and write on your own blog about what you like and dislike about the site. Are the articles what you would consider to be fair and balanced? Are there a good variety of articles? What interactive pieces does the blog provide? How might the site appeal to audiences who aren't familiar with politics? How might these blogging sites help to influence public opinion?

I have been a reader of Politico for quite a while and enjoy it for many reasons. I believe that it is difficult to be 100% objective when reporting on political situations while providing enough background and insight to fully understand the intent of a piece of legislation or initiative. For this reason, I read both conservative blogs as well as liberal blogs. What I like about Politico is that it has content that spanse the entire political spectrum. The blog also has a great platform for multimedia and dialogue. I do not believe Politico is a very good source for newcomers to politics because it can be overwhelming and a lot of conflicting information at once.

The Huffington Post is quite an interesting blog that I seldom viewed but is becoming an interesting chapter in the evolution of media. AOL acquired the Huffington Post and gave Ariana Huffington editorial control over all the blog and media brands under AOL. The long story short is one such brand that writes technology news, TechCrunch, has been under fire by their new boss because Ariana believe Mike Arrington, TechCrunches founder and editor, can no longer be objective in his reporting and has fired him. TechCrunch has always been independent of AOL's editorial influence despite ownership and Ariana Huffington has now thrown that idea out the window. Many in the online media community are calling fowl over this when examining Ariana Huffington's own bias and lack of objective decisions and editorial control.

Another very unique blog I frequent at least daily is the Drudge Report. I say unique because Matt Drudge rarely post original content but rather posts links to other news sources on the web. Despite this, he drives traffic and therefore perceptions without typing a single word and his simple website and often controls the talking points of traditional media for that day.