Conservative Bloggers on the Hill

June 25, 2006

Comments

The New Media Strategies workshop for Capital Hill staffers I participated in Friday got coverage in yesterday’s Washington Times.

I’m quoted toward the end of the piece answering the “Should Members of Congress fear bloggers” question suggested by David All:

“We’re not that powerful,” said Outside the Beltway blogger James Joyner. “We’re never going to be like Walter Cronkite was 25 years ago.” Mr. Joyner estimates his Web site has about 10,000 daily readers.

Then again, nobody will ever again have the power Cronkite had. Today’s media is too diffuse for that. And that’s a good thing.

4 responses to “Conservative Bloggers on the Hill”

McGehee

June 26, 2006 at 11:24 am

Amen, James.
yetanotherjohn

June 26, 2006 at 3:16 pm

I don’t know.

Ask the Captain about the new Canadian government.

Have a meeting with Dan Rather, he has lots of time on his hands.

Call the supreme court press office to get an interview with Justice Meyers.

Perhaps you should discuss this with senate majority leader Lott.

And of course with a nod to the left of the blogosphere, fear and tremble at the pelt of Gannon nailed to their door.

I don’t think that any one blogger is going to be able to turn a military defeat for our enemies into a strategic victory for them like uncle Walter did, but I suspect as a group the blogs will have a major impact. Of course with multiple mouths, not one, the impacts won’t be so much by one person as it is by group consensus.
James Joyner

June 26, 2006 at 4:16 pm

yaj: I think, in all those cases, the impact of the blogs is real but vastly overstated. The blogs started something that got picked up in the MSM in most those cases. The blogs alone would not have much mattered, frankly.

And I think Harriet Miers case had almost nothing to do with blogs. The conservative commentariate, including places like NRO and Weekly Standard, were uniformly against her.