Burnt Orange Report

Breakfast Blogging

By Byron LaMasters

The rumors were that Max Cleland was going to speak to the bloggers, but he had to cancel, and that the speaker for our breakfast would be someone bigger than Max Cleland. I wasn't sure if that meant that we were going to have Michael Moore, or some other larger than average individual, but alas, we were in luck. The credentialled bloggers, and about twice as many news reporters (or was it three to one?) had the opportunity to hear two people who needed no introduction. Barack Obama and Howard Dean:

Obama just had time to stop in, say hello, talk for three minutes, and leave. I would have loved to hear him give his stump speech, but I can wait for that until tomorrow night.

Dean, on the other hand, in typical Howard Dean fashion, offered a few surprises. The typical - basically what myself, and every other blogger has been saying to most media folks we talk to - that blogging is a two-way communication with voters - something that has not existed to this extent in a long time, if ever in the American political process. Dean noted that the first two people that he hired for Democracy for America were bloggers. Dean then said something to the effect that the "mainstream media are the last people to figure out whats really going on in America, because they spend so much time in Washington". In a way, he was right. In the polls and in fundraising, Dean was the leader for the Democratic Presidential nomination by June (July at the latest), yet the establishment media only proclaimed him as such at the end of the year. The activists knew Dean was the frontrunner. The bloggers knew it. But the mainstream media wasn't buying it. Perhaps, in the long run, the media was right, but not before they joined with everyone else in saying in December what the rest of us were saying in July - that Dean was the frontrunner.

Dean continued to note that most politicians fight the last war as opposed to the next one. Dean predicted that people like Rupert Murdoch and others in the mainstream media would lose out in the long run, or be forced to change to accommodate the next generation. There's a reason why young people get their news from the Internet and the Daily Show. When the mainstream media does not conform to the demands of their viewers, they lose. It's the same with bloggers. The credentialed bloggers in Boston are only here because we have (at least enough of the time) met the needs of our readers.

Perhaps Dean paid the bloggers his best compliment with this: "If i were you I would not be insulted if someone didn't call you a real journalist... Have you read what's in the NY Post from time to time?" Yup. Gephardt for VP... all the way.