Iowa Blogosphere News
When we (and other Iowa Blogs) posted a call to support Boswell in Barbara Boxer’s “Whom should we give money to?” poll, you responded. We were pretty sure Boswell would lose, since he was at second-to-last place, but then he jumped, and this weekend, he was declared the winner with 31% of the votes. I won’t claim that bloggers did it all, but we certainly made a difference, and that’s something we can all be proud of.
In general, Iowa political blogs — in particular, progressive Iowa blogs — seem to have improved significantly since I started watching them closely in January. I think all of us have seen our traffic increase, and that has kept us interested in it. In particular, I’ve seen Iowa Progress’s traffic go from 0 (we were only founded in March) to over 1,000 visits per week. Most surprising, perhaps, is the fact that we get a ton of our hits from outside Iowa. That means that people who are looking for places to send money are listening to us, and we’re filling a niche for them that may not have been filled before us.
It also means that potential presidential campaigns are listening to what we have to say. And that much is clear from the interviews that Drew (Feingold, Warner) and the folks at Political Forecast (Warner) have done with potential candidates. I’ve complained about the quality of the interviews in the past, but I still think that they’re interesting and that they set an important precedent for 2008 that candidates can’t afford to ignore us.
We’re growing, and people in the business are recognizing it. State-wide campaign staffers have said things like “I honestly think any candidate that ignores what is being said in the blogosphere and power of the web is a losing candidate.” The stakes are constantly rising.
But unfortunately, today Drew announced that he won’t be blogging at DrewMiller.net for the next several months. This is a blow to our blogosphere in Iowa, but it won’t be fatal. We have a void to fill, and I know all of us bloggers are going to try our best to fill it.
Add comment May 14th, 2006
