BNN’s perpetual controversy
July 18th, 2008 | by David Mastio |From time to time a blogger or a group of bloggers will decide they don’t like BNN for one reason or another and ask (sometimes demand) to be removed. In many cases, that’s easily accomplished as BNN topic and metro buzz sites are all entirely voluntary.
For BNN’s state focused public affairs aggregators, it is a different story. BNN has a mission that is larger than making a buck. (Scratch a journalist, even a digital one, and you’re likely to find an idealist of one kind or another.) Our goal in building BNN is to quickly and efficiently bring information to the public and other bloggers about what is going on in each state’s news and politics blogosphere because the doings there are news.
Public affairs blogs at the national, state and local level have matured into a powerful hybrid medium. Part activist, part journalist, part citizen, bloggers break news, shape political debate, both spark and completely destroy news stories, torpedo and inspire legislation and rock political campaigns. If you were paying attention during the last presidential election, it is possible that blogspheric sleuthing saved George Bush’s presidency.
An influential blogosphere is a welcome development. Disconnected elites are getting a good hard dose of reality. The general public is reclaiming a First Amendment that has too long been the province of flag burners, protection for pornographers and the plaything of a professional chattering class comfortably ensconced in coastal city cocktail parties. Blogs have changed that.
Now that the blogosphere is clearly a player, the bloggers that make it up have to get used to the fact that they are news. If sticking by our commitment to bring people the most comprehensive information on what’s happening in each state’s public affairs blogosphere — bringing transparency — means we are unpopular in some quarters, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.
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