Political Blog

The blog I chose to write about is called Politics Now and it is a blog written by contributors of the Buffalo News namely Jerry Zremski, Douglas Turner, and Robert J. McCarthy. The blog can be accessed by visiting http://buffalonews.typepad.com/politics_now/2008/08/index.html. The three contributors to this blog are writers for the Buffalo News who, in addition to writing for the paper, blog daily on the site. The blog began on august 22nd 2007 and is still posted on daily.
I found this blog to be very interesting. I especially liked how it has different contributors which allows readers to enjoy different opinions, viewpoints, and writing styles. The posts are mostly non partisan in nature. I started reading with the anticipation of reading a mostly liberal blog, but for the most part I couldn't tell if the writers were pro McCain or Obama. Many of the posts were directly about the competition between the 2 candidates but there will also posts that adressed other political issues.i like the post about whether Hillary Clinton would run for president again and the post about Kathy Konst and whether she voted twice in the 1998 election. It is important that people realize that the presidential election isn't the only political thing happening in the world right now. A lot of people have trouble putting the presidential election and all it's aspects into perspective. The bottom of the page did have an Ad for Obama which confirmed my initial suspicion that the blog leaned to the left.
I read the comments for most of the posts and it was very clear that many people use this blog as a forum for finding out about the election and also sharing their views on the hot issues and their likes and dislikes of the two candidates. For the most part it seems that most of the readers support Obama but many people question his links to the liberal organization ACORN. Many people got into heated debates with their comments. Many of the posts had comments by the same people multiple times.
Overall I really enjoyed reading the blog. Because the blog is done by professional political journalists I found the blog to be very informative and I learned a lot about the election that I didn't previously know. There is a good chance that I access this blog again before the election because it provides me with a simple, unbiased way to learn about what is going on.

1)Mathew. Can Blogs Effect Politics and Society?. April 27, 2006. URL: http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2006/04/27/can-blogs-affect-politics-and-society/
2)Pew Internet. (2008). The internet and the 2008 election. Retrieved on October 23, 2008 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_2008_election.pdf