Recently in Netroots & Blog Meta Category

It happened again. I lost an hour.

I was checking out Andrew Sullivan and decided to flip over and see what Ta-Nehisi Coates was commenting on today. And Ta-Nehisi credited J Starr for an Ebony cover on "The Twenty-five Coolest Brothers of All Time" and of course, you know who was on the cover as the coolest of the cool. So I clicked on J Starr's blog and went to his home page and noticed that he had Hendrick Hertzberg on his blogroll list. J Starr's blogroll is selective - something I always have trouble with. It includes several of my daily blog reads which made me look more closely at the other two he chose to list: Chapati Mystery and Enigmakaty.

Chapati Mystery has a very interesting pedigree and anyone who takes the time to translate Dr. A.Q. Khan's latest literary effort into English for the rest of us, deserves some note in my book. Scrolling through the rest of the posts currently up on the front page gives me the urge to collect this nugget of a blog.

Onto J Starr's next entry.

Wow.

Enigmakaty is an artist with words and colors and images. She puts your head in a completely separate place from politics and economics. Having lived in the Madison area for a while when I was in high school, her remembrances strike a special chord for me. But even if you've never been there, her vivid posts bring it alive. And the food sounds really good too.

Deep breath. Go get some tea.

Back to J Starr ... scrolling down. The rest of the pictures and the text in the post Ta-Nehisi linked to underscore something we discussed at the dinner table the other night -- that Obama makes being smart cool again for lots of kids -- adults too, for that matter. J Starr then mentions Attackerman's post on Obama and Iran. [Do go read it for its own value. It's good.]

Which leads me to Spencer Ackerman's Attackerman blog and his blogroll which is eclectic and longer and may take a few days to process.

At which time I began to realize that I could spend hours surfing from one blog list to another, finding new nuggets. But it raises another question. How do I decide which to add to my blogroll? And how do I avoid losing track of the nuggets that I find? And ultimately, I must admit that that's one reason I started my own blog -- so I would have some place to put all these interesting places to wander.

Where do you like to wander? What draws your eye?

The Minnesota Post did a really nice article on The Big Tent. Actually if I'm envious of anything, it's of the bloggers who are hanging out in the Big Tent this week, making connections with each other, with all the non-bloggers who stop in to see what this cool new thing is. I'm sure it's crowded and electrical outlets to recharge stuff are at a premium but still.

By the way, the picture to the right by the Minnesota Post is of John Aravosis interviewing Markos. John posted video of the interview on Americablog.

Susan Gardner of Daily Kos was interviewed and among the other things she said was this description of who was at the Big Tent and why. I think it's one of the best descriptions of the blogosphere, left and right, that I've seen.

"We have ongoing dialogues about what policy should be, what elections are like. We're ordinary people extraordinarily interested in politics."

Exactly. Wish I'd said that. The article goes on to note:

Well, they've done it. I clicked on The Carpetbagger Report in my blogroll to see what Steve Benen had to say about Biden and got reminded of his post earlier this week announcing that he, Kevin Drum and Hilzoy are going to play hopscotch on the blogs. And, yes, in the process, ruining my blogroll list.

Actually congratulations to all three. Kevin Drum will be leaving the Political Animal blog at The Washington Monthly to start blogging at Mother Jones under his own moniker. Steve Benen will close out The Carpetbagger Report and start blogging at the Political Animal along with Hilzoy who's already confessed that he loves Obsidian Wings so much, he can't give up the habit and will still be blogging there as well.

So Kevin's at MJ, Steve and Hilzoy are at Political Animal/WaMo and Hilzoy's still at ObWi. Add that to Yglesias's from The Atlantic to CAP and Ta-Nehisi's move to The Atlantic and it sure does make hash of a blogroll and links in a hurry. Hope they don't wipe out The Carpetbagger Report archive and break all my links.

Here's another roundup of Netroot Nation 2008 coverage in the media and on the blogs. There will be a special Daily Kos edition soon along with a final roundup edition when I can get them pulled together.

Previous NN08 roundups:   #1     #2     #3

» Spencer Ackerman did a liveblog of the session on media coverage of the Iraq War with Samantha Power, Greg Mitchell, Mark Danner, and McJoan (Joan Carter).

» The Washington Post has a NN08 wrap-up article on what they think the significance of the netroots will be going forward. I don't think they quite get the blogosphere yet hence their conclusions aren't really worth the paper they're printed on (or the electrons) but someone will quote them so go read up.

» WaPo's The Trail blog has several more NN08 posts.
    -- I found this post about the straw poll of bloggers most interesting.
    -- an extended post about Al Gore's appearance including embedded youtube clips of Al's talk in case you haven't seen it yet. I watched on ustream.tv and it was good.
    -- from Garance Franke-Ruta, a post on NN08's second surprise visitor, Bob Barr

» News8 Austin has a video clip (youtube) of Rick Noriega, H/T scarce

» The Austin Statesman outdid itself in rudeness in this article which is only available by Google cache now. Evidently they got a little feedback, which prompted this apology from the Editor. Yeah, that article really didn't work.

» The Austin Chronicle ensured that not all the Austin news coverage was bad with a number of articles.
    -- Wells Dunbar wrote a great intro to the left blogosphere for non-blog people in this article, Building the Netroots Nation
    -- a writeup on what Lawrence Lessig and Karl Frisch had to say.
    -- an interview with filmmaker Alex Gibney who appeared at NN08
    -- a thumbnail description of how NN08 came to be
    -- a pre-conference review of progressive blogs -- interesting selection by the author. Probably not the ones someone from the dkos / TPM / mydd circle would have chosen. Though this post of The Blogosphere Branches Out lists some of the more usual suspects in its "harvest of the best liberal and progressive reads online".
    -- And finally, a major H/T to anotherdemocrat for the links on the Austin Chronicle

» HuffPost's coverage of Al Gore's surprise appearance during Nancy Pelosi's session includes a selection of the Tweets aka Twitter posts that happened while they were on.

» MyDD's Jonathan Singer did a BlogTalkRadio segment at NN08.

» Dave Nalle of BlogCritic and The Republic of Dave had two more posts on NN08 which he posted in both locations. The first one dealt with his "outing" in NN08 Roundup #2 and the second was a lengthy report of his experiences at NN08 versus the right-wing bloggers gathering. Seems the Rude Pundit visited them and caused a ruckus. Also some other lefty bloggers got in and did some video but he hasn't seen it yet on the net.

» NPR Morning Edition story courtesy of st minutia

» Ari Melber at Democracy Arsenal did a very short straight up summary of Gore's appearance at NN08.

» The NPI (Northwest Progressive Institute) Advocate blog has a series of posts from different NPI bloggers up about NN08. Great coverage if you didn't make it to these sessions or missed NN altogether.
    -- a take on Friday night's party scene in Austin
    -- a great liveblog post on the Ask the Speaker session with Nancy Pelosi
    -- a detailed post on Al Gore's surprise appearance along with details about the audience interaction
    -- a short report on the Working Outside the Box panel
    -- a writeup from a couple different people on Lawrence Lessig's powerful keynote address
    -- a post on Gina Cooper's appearance noting that she is stepping down as director of NN08 plus the announcement of next year's NN in Pittsburgh and finally, a snippet indicating that the graduated increase of registrations will no longer be tied to a date. They've set aside so many at each level starting at $175, and when they're gone, it will go to the next level. Good things to know for those of us who weren't there.
    -- a summary of what Donna Edwards had to say to all of the NN08 attendees
    -- a quick note on Gavin Newsome's intro to Van Jones which is covered in a lengthier post.
    -- thoughts from the bloggers brunch on the final day of NN08

» KVUE TV has a short writeup on Pelosi and Gore's appearance at NN08

» Time Magazine pushes a distorted view of Pelosi's reception at NN08 in this article about Pelosi and Gore's appearance.

» WSJ's Washington Wire blog had several more posts about NN08
    -- they noted Bob Barr's surprise appearance
    -- did some snarking at Lawrence Lessig's appearance in this one
    -- reported on Gore's appearance an NN08 though they managed to avoid including a lot of detail about what he actually discussed.
    -- somehow they were able to measure the lack of Dem party unity at NN08 through the dynamics of Markos's session with Harold Ford.

» National Journal's Hotline people posted the required posts on Markos vs. Harold Ford, Al Gore's surprise visit, and a collection of quotes from various speakers at NN08.

» The Seminal has a post by Jason Rosenbaum, one of the speakers at the "Marketing and Monetizing Your Progressive Blog" and "Using Social Networks to Grow Your Blog's Community" that includes links and embeds of the slides used by various panelists at those two sessions. Probably not quite as good as being there but all the material will give you a good idea of what they talked about.

Jason and the Seminal also posted video of an interview they did with dkos regular Melody Townsel and the story of her battle with her insurance company who sought to deny her then 2-year-old daughter coverage on the grounds that she'd attempted suicide. Melody, I always knew that dkos was graced by your presence. This just confirms it.

» AfterDowningStreet provides the far-left view of Nancy Pelosi's session in this post. It's what you would expect and includes this question: "How long will the centrist bureaucrats of Netroots Nation and groups like MoveOn roll-over for lowest common denominator Democrats and Barack Obama?" Centrist bureaucrats of Netroots Nation? Yeah, well, moving on.

» The San Francisco Chronicle Politics blog's Joe Garofoli had a number of posts on NN08 including
    -- the mandatory post on Al Gore's surprise appearance.
    -- a bit on Wes Clark's speech including his reference to the right wing freak machine.
    -- a lengthy post on why Gavin Newsom was at NN08. This one's worth reading if for nothing else than the pat on the back you can all give yourselves after you read what he says about interacting with the netroots. And, BiPM aka Bill in Portland Maine, Gavin Newsom knows who you are.

» The SF Chronicle also ran a straight news article by Joe Garofali on NN08 and how it's evolved with a nice timeline at the end marking key milestones.

» The NY Times reported on Al Gore's appearance with Nancy Pelosi at NN08. What was more interesting was their link to an annotated version of Al Gore's 7-17 Energy speech updated with notes on both candidates' reactions to the speech and a hat-tip to what Gore said at NN08.

» The Houston Chronicle had a couple reporters at NN08 who filed a report that somehow gave parity to NN08 and that other blogger gathering under a title that referenced Al Gore's appearance. You'll "love" the quotes from WSJ staffer Steve Moore and Grover Norquist. As Wes put it, the Right Wing Freak Show was freaking out.

» GoldnI at Silence isn't Golden blog has put up video of Markos and Harold Ford's session minus the Q&A part. It seems GoldnI is a former Ford intern and had an important question for him that she didn't get to ask during the Q&A but did get to ask later. You'll have to read the blog to find out what it is and how he answered. Other posts about NN08: a view of the Jewish Caucus and pics with Markos.

» TPMtv caught up with Gavin Newsom after his intro of Van Jones and did this interview.

» The People's Weekly World has a post about NN08 that is remarkable only in how it brings together disparate elements and ties them together in a narrative that doesn't really resemble what happened at NN08.

» HuffPost's Justin Hamilton makes a valid point that reflects how I felt about YK07: "The sheer number of topics and panels each day was breathtaking: around 40-50 different subjects were discussed for somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour a piece. Just enough time to give people a brush stroke look at a topic, not enough time to get substantive."

» Pensacola Beach blog monitoredthe NN08 proceedings from the comfort of home. Link courtesy of panicbean

» Former MO Sen. Jean Carnahan is at NN08 and loved the Al Gore surprise appearance. She also likes us: "This gathering of progressive bloggers at Netroots Nation is a breath of fresh air as they deal creatively with the "democracy crisis.""

» National Journal's Hotline blog has a number of entries on what they've observed at NN08 including the OpenLeft Caucus, chats with Todd Beeton of mydd and Matt Yglesias, and summaries of Howard Dean's and Wes Clark's speeches.

» Liberal Oasis blogger Bill Scher has been a one busy person at NN08. He's done a number of interviews and uploaded all the video. Check them out. Nice job, Bill.
    -- He did an interview (video) onsite at NN08 with Jim Hightower.
    -- He also interviewed (3 videos) Energize America's Mark Sumner and A Siegel, and Natasha Chart of MyDD, Open Left and Pacific Views talked about how bloggers make environmental issues more accessible both inside and outside the blogosphere.
    -- He interviewed Mark Begich running for Alaska's Senate seat dethroning Ted Stevens.
    -- He interviewed some attendees after the Labor Caucus on Thursday (2 videos) including Jason Lefkowitz, online organizer for Change To Win, and Elana Levin from UNITE HERE and Stephanie Taylor from SEIU.

» RCP's Kyle Trygvstad did an interview with Darcy Burner. He also posts about Gov. Siegelman's appearance at NN08, Markos's and Harold Ford's noon-time matchup and Al Gore's surprise appearance with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

» MyDD has lots of good posts about what's happening at NN08 including:
    -- Todd Beeton with a piece about the Road to 60 Senate challengers at NN08
    -- entrepeneur with an appeal to help write the Netroots Nation political platform online.
    -- Jonathan Singer with notes on his interview with Gov. Siegelman and Siegelman's appearance at NN08
    -- Todd Beeton on Thursday night's opener with Howard Dean and Gen. Clark
    -- Todd made some brief notes about the lunchtime chat between Markos and Harold Ford.

» The Austin Statesman has a blog called Postcards from the Lege with a number of entries about NN08.
    -- Markos did a radio show interview with KOOP FM
    -- Notes on Howard Dean's rallies in Crawford and Austin
    -- a picture of the sign noting that the Mom's Caucus has been moved from the assigned location to Phil's Ice House
    -- a post with pictures about the Second Life panel and in which the Second Life participants outnumbered the real life participants
    -- a post with video about hanging out in the Media Room waiting for Obama Girl
    -- notes on Gen. Clark's keynote opener and Howard Dean's keynote address
    -- Coverage of Rick Noriega's liveblog conversation in his Daily Kos diary about John Cornyn's fear of the netroots

» Sam Stein at HuffPost blogged about Markos and Harold Ford including the heckling Ford received. Included some video for you to watch if you missed it.

» WaPo's The Trail blog has a couple entries about NN08
    -- Garance Franke-Ruta has a post whose title implies that the Obama campaign is not obviously present at NN08 and then proceeds to detail all the different people from the campaign who are there and what they're contributing. Sidenote: I attended a session that she moderated last year and I still can't pronounce her name properly. Good session though.
    -- a post with video of Al Gore's surprise appearance with Nancy Pelosi.

» KVUE News of Austin has a background article and video about Netroots Nation along with an interview with Nate Wilcox aka Texas Nate on myDD, which talks about Nate's new book, Netroots Rising, which he co-authored with Lowell Feld of Raising Kane, aka lowkell at Daily Kos.

» The NY Times had this intro article about NN08 by Katherine Seelye who's attending the conference and also posts on NYT's The Caucus blog

» The NYT's The Caucus blog has several diverse entries on NN08.
    -- a thorough post about Speaker Pelosi's Q&A session and Al Gore's surprise appearance.
    -- a post on a panel about the use of profanity in blogging -- Digby's doing less. Sounds like it was interesting.
    -- their post about the "debate" between Markos and Harold Ford
    -- Katherine Seelye posted one about a panel that gathered to discuss "making the national popular vote the method by which Americans choose their presidents". Hendrik Hertzberg was present. Sounded like it was more of a group looking for an audience and to recruit some new blogosphere-based blood than a panel convened by bloggers from her description.

» The Dallas Morning News blogger Karen Brooks keeps up with her mostly entertaining posts about NN08 here, here, here, and here. IMO, Karen, you should have gone to the panel on media's failures and domination by the RWNM. You might have learned something. Gasp!

» The ACLU Blog of Rights contingent reports in about their experiences here and here. They have some good links including one to video of the profanity on the blogs panel

» Pandagon has the video of the profanity on the blogs panel. Looks like it's one of the more popular, er, infamous sessions thus far. Jesse Taylor also has a post up about Al Gore's surprise appearance. Amanda Marcotte has a thoughtful post about the future of lefty blogging and how it may change with a Democratic president in office based on the panel with Digby, Atrios, Rick Perlstein and Paul Krug yesterday. I watched it via ustream.tv and it was great.

» Scienceblog's Virginia Hughes talks about Thursday's highlights at NN08. Lots of good science action from her perspective.

» ReGeneration blog has a day 2 post up which includes a couple of video interviews.

» Grist blogger David Roberts does a sort-of stream-of-consciousness post on Al Gore's surprise appearance at NN08. An entertaining and informative read. There's also a post about this interview with David Roberts.

» Jason Linkins at HuffPo has a detailed post about the panel titled From Dean To Obama: Four Years In the Internet Revolution. Sounds like they had an interesting discussion.

» The AFL-CIO blog reports on NN08 activities including some of what happened at the Labor caucus on Thursday and on a Friday panel on Middle Class economics.

» thru a blue filter blog has a post up about Markos's appearance on David Gregory's show on MSNBC in case you missed it.

» The Denver Post's PoliticsWest blog has a post up with some liveblogging entries from Saturday morning's events at NN08. It's interesting to see what Stephen Keating picked out as key points to pass along.

» WSJ's Washington Wire blog posts about Netroots Nation.

» Dallas Morning News Trailblazer blog is written by Karen Brooks and she has several fun entries up starting with pics of Howard Dean's rally in Austin. Netroot Nations Meta-Swag includes a youtube clip of the goodies being handed out at the convention. They got some fun stuff.

» KEYETV, CBS station in Austin, has a piece on NN08 and blogging in general. Definitely written by a non-blogger. Two of the Texas blogs get nice nods and links in the article.

» McJoan of Daily Kos interviewed Howard Dean along with Chris Bowers and Jonathan Singer yesterday after his NN08 rally and writes about their discussion. Interesting read on upcoming strategies and past successes.

» RealClearPolitics blog notes the opening of NN08 and incorrectly quotes Howard Dean. He really said "affinity group", not "infinity group". Clean the wax out of your ears, guys.

» Blogcritic's Dave Nalle files his first spy report. As he acknowledges right off the bat, he is there undercover to see what the other side is doing. He demonstrates his complete ignorance of the left blogosphere in his description of the attendees and the dkos blogging community. Beware who you're talking to at the conference.

» Hunter at Daily Kos has posted one of his usual very thoughtful essays about NN08 and what it means. For those interested in the evolution of the political blogosphere, it's definitely grist for the thinking mill.

» ReGeneration, a green group that's working with the people from Grist on environmental issues post about their activities at NN08 and what they have planned to present to the NN08 attendees.

» Molly at NARAL's Blog for Choice has a short, sweet youtube clip summing up her first day at NN08.

» Alternet highlights part of Gen. Wesley Clark's speech at NN08 -- the part where he talked about the "right wing freak show".

» The Austin Statesman reports on Howard Dean's appearance in Crawford, Texas and some of what he said at the NN08 rally yesterday afternoon.

» The Wall Street Journal has an article pointing out just how far behind the right wing blogosphere is compared to NN08 and the left wing blogosphere. Go read if you want to gloat a little.

» NYTimes The Caucus blog has a few words about NN08 including noting that "the fist-bump has become the symbol of solidarity on the Democratic side". They also posted about NN08's "opinion media" label for Fox News.

» IamTRex has a nice photo gallery blog post up.

» Kossack fbihop has a podcast and two entries with observations on his first day at NN08.

YearlyKos 2007 in Chicago was a terrific time. Couldn't make Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin so I thought I'd try to collect some of the coverage of NN08 in the media and blogs.

» KXAN TV in Austin reports on the arrival of the convention with a nice feature about the Burnt Orange blog.

» Dallas Morning News with a nice kickoff article from Karen Brooks on NN08 and how bloggers are operating offline.

» The Austin Statesman has 4 stories up about NN08. The first is a complete intro to NN08 and the bloggers who will be attending and what they'll be doing. The second is a story on how Netroots Nation was enticed to coming to Austin. The third is a background on how NN08 evolved from Markos' blog and the dailykos community. The fourth is an editorial that acknowledges the evolution of Netroots Nation into an influential leftwing player.

» The Hill has an informative piece on NN08 and the plans for a blog site focused on Congress and the legislative sausage-making process. "To that end, Daily Kos, the pre-eminent liberal blog, plans to start a website focused on Congress this September."

» Washington Times article and followup blog post on the start of NN08 and the faceoff between Harold Ford and Markos.

Just before the Super-Tuesday primary, National Journal's Blogometer had an interesting round-up of leading lefty bloggers and what they had to say about Obama. The whole section titled, 'OBAMA: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' is interesting but Chris Bowers' comments from OpenLeft particularly caught my eye.

Chris Bowers, who has harshly criticized Obama in the past, considers Obama a "people-powered" candidate in spite of the fact that his rhetoric differs from that of the netroots: "Let's see here: a campaign that uses extensive internet organizing, huge campaign rallies, heavy youth and creative class support, a record breaking number of small donors, a fulfilled promise of record turnout, and combination of [Howard] Dean and [Wesley] Clark voters to force the best possible candidate the Democratic establishment could offer down to the wire?

Correct me if I am wrong, but in terms of structure, that seems to be exactly what the emergence of the progressive blogosphere suggested could happen in a Democratic Presidential primary in 2004. Just because the campaign in question was not, seemingly, single-handedly plucked from relative obscurity by a few prominent bloggers does not mean the Obama campaign is not using the exact same energy and exact same new, political trajectory that the blogosphere was riding back in 2003-2004."

Bowers concludes: "The political zeitgeist that the progressive blogosphere first seized upon five or six years ago was released into the population at large and came back, unexpectedly, as the Barack Obama campaign. That energy certainly didn't turn out with the same rhetorical approach it started with, but otherwise it is nearly structurally identical. In other words, the whole people-powered thing turned out exactly the way we planned it would, only that it sounds a little different."

The only part on which I will quibble with him is that he did not credit the Kerry-Edwards blog and what it did to energize people in the 2004 general election run-up. The Kerry supporter groups that formed during that period are still active today and have transferred much of their energy to the Obama campaign.

Cross-posted from Dwahzon's Village