Politically blogging
I think I am starting to see where the future of political weblogging is headed, and it seems quite promising.
The weblog action after September 11 was largely centered around the event (and the fallout), but that's died off and we're seeing more and more debates about all kinds of interesting topics.
The various weblog aggregation mechanisms I use have created some problems in this area; far too often the debate wanders off into trivial differences, because the parties doing the ping-pong are all on the same side.
I hope that someone eventually comes up with a way to measure balance in a search engine. It will be an amazingly difficult thing to do well, but extremely valuable. What do I mean by balance? Not that a particular news organization (or individual) tries to see both sides (and the middle) on every subject, but that they link to alternative viewpoints. The best news delivery mechanism IMO is one which covers a particular topic and yet allows a reader easy access to the other side(s). I'm going to have a lot more respect for an article trashing the Justice Department if it includes links to alternative views and some discusion about the different opinions.
In the meantime, there are some basic ways to see alternative opinions. It's just a little harder.
Dave Winer thinks that every member of congress will have a personally edited weblog within five years. Not a chance in hell.
On the other hand, I do see the idea that some members will have staff filtered weblogs (with position papers as stories in the Radio metaphor) as a real possibility. I can also see some of our representatives (local, county, state and perhaps national) being beaten in some cases based on their day to day responsiveness to questions from John Q. Public.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather elect someone whose positions are personal and reasonably well thought out than someone whose positions are dictated purely by party affiliation.
11:04:23 PM 
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