Local Bloggers Start A Global Conversation, by Aman Batheja

Local bloggers start a global conversation
By AMAN BATHEJA
abatheja@star-telegram.com

Move over, Bill O’Reilly. Step aside, Keith Olbermann.
This election season has shown that one doesn’t need a TV show to passionately push a point of view.
Whether you call them pundits, political observers or typing heads, political bloggers have ensured that the public discourse this election season has been the most wide-ranging and multifaceted in American history.
Local bloggers, some of whom had shied away from politics before this year, say writing about the elections has attracted more readers while forcing them to do research on the issues and gain a richer understanding of their own beliefs.
"I would have never known what an earmark was before, but now it’s ingrained in my psyche," said blogger Mark Pakulak of Runaway Bay, who writes about the presidential race on his blog, The Idiot Speaketh.
Local but global
Bloggers made a splash on the national political scene in 2004, when they helped break several big stories in the presidential race between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Since then, millions of opinionated people have joined in on the global conversation.
"It’s just really cool to know that there are people in Israel, Australia and London who log on to my mad ravings every day," said Allen Patterson, a shipping manager from Fort Worth who often writes about religion and his libertarian politics on his blog, The Whited Sepulchre.
Many blogs have focused more on politics this year even though they may not have started out that way.
John Rost, a maintenance supervisor from Arlington, launched his blog, A Keyboard and a .45, in 2006 to write about his passion for gun rights. More recently, Rost has explored the presidential candidates’ positions on guns, including conducting an interview via e-mail with California Rep. Duncan Hunter when he was a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. He has written several posts in recent days urging readers to vote for John McCain.
"Right now it’s real political because we’re in a political season, but most of the time, I try to keep it about guns," Rost said.
Barry Green of Decatur, a former district attorney for Wise and Jack counties, regularly peppers local and national politics into his blog between photos of women in skimpy clothes and random musings.
"It tends to spur a lot of comments if you put up anything political in nature," said Green, who launched his blog, Liberally Lean from the Land of Dairy Queen, about three years ago. "Even those that disagree, I think they tend to come back more than those that agree."
Now that they have a taste for punditry, some find they can’t get enough.
In October, Pakulak said, he tried to take a vacation from posting political news on his blog. He didn’t last three days, he said.
"There was too much stuff bursting to get out," he said.
Pakulak’s blogging initially tended to focus on anything he found funny. That changed in August when McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. The disabled stay-at-home father has since devoted most of his blog posts to the presidential race and mocking Palin in particular.
"My ammunition will go way down if McCain doesn’t win," said Pakulak, who supports Obama.
Hot-button topics
Along with giving millions a voice online, many bloggers say writing about political issues helps them better understand their own beliefs. Some, like the Denton County writer behind the blog Political Virgin, find that blogging anonymously lets them explore their thoughts more freely.
"It allows me to work out my own views without having to defend those views to people in my daily life," the blogger, who asked that her name not be used, wrote in an e-mail.
The constant give-and-take with visitors who post comments often pushes bloggers into debates over their positions. Several bloggers recalled posts about hot-button issues — evolution, healthcare or the economy — that sparked dozens of responses.
"Sometimes it strengthens your view. Sometimes it changes it," said Steve Southwell, of Lewisville, a computer programmer and the lead writer of Whos Playin?, which covers local and national politics. "In the end we disagree, but hopefully we keep it respectful."
Though the elections have provided plenty of fodder, some bloggers will be happy to be done writing about the campaigns.
Jim Carson, a former Keller city councilman, launched Keller City Limits back in 2005 to focus on city issues. Posts about local and national races, most written by another blogger to the site, have attracted plenty of readers, he said. However, he looks forward to the blog regaining its prime function as "a sounding board" for local residents talking about local issues, he said.
"Ideas that would not get heard otherwise get put up regularly on the blog," Carson said. "Even if those ideas get rejected, at least they were considered."

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The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs

The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs

The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances. For example, a book reviewer is allowed to quote passages from the work without permission from the publisher.
Fair use has become an essential concept to many bloggers, who often quote portions of articles before discussing them. The A.P., a cooperative owned by 1,500 daily newspapers, including The New York Times, provides written articles and broadcast material to thousands of news organizations and Web sites that pay to use them.
Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.
On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.
The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet.
The Drudge Retort was initially started as a left-leaning parody of the much larger Drudge Report, run by the conservative muckraker Matt Drudge. In recent years, the Drudge Retort has become more of a social news site, similar to sites like Digg, in which members post links to news articles for others to comment on.
But Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of the Drudge Retort and several other Web sites, said the issue goes far beyond one site. “There are millions of people sharing links to news articles on blogs, message boards and sites like Digg. If The A.P. has concerns that go all the way down to one or two sentences of quoting, they need to tell people what they think is legal and where the boundaries are.”
On Friday, The A.P. issued a statement defending its action, saying it was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.” An A.P. spokesman declined Friday to further explain the association’s position.
After that, however, the news association convened a meeting of its executives at which it decided to suspend its efforts to challenge blogs until it creates a more thoughtful standard.
“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.
Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.
“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”
Even if The A.P. sets standards, bloggers could choose to use more content than its standards permit, and then The A.P. would have to decide whether to take legal action against them. One important legal test of whether an excerpt exceeds fair use is if it causes financial harm to the copyright owner.
“The principal question is whether the excerpt is a substitute for the story, or some established adaptation of the story,” said Timothy Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law School. Mr. Wu said that the case is not clear-cut, but he believes that The A.P. is likely to lose a court case to assert a claim on that issue.
“It’s hard to see how the Drudge Retort ‘first few lines’ is a substitute for the story,” Mr. Wu said.
Mr. Kennedy argued, however, that The Associated Press believes that in some cases, the essence of an article can be encapsulated in very few words.
“As content creators, we firmly believe that everything we create, from video footage all the way down to a structured headline, is creative content that has value,” he said.
But he also said that the association hopes that it will not have to test this theory in court.
“We are not trying to sue bloggers,” Mr. Kennedy said. “That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do.”

I hope I did this correctly.
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