Bloggers on the Bus by Eric Boehlert

How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press

From the guy who wrote LapDogs: How the Press Rolled Over For Bush,  which sounds interesting too.  I may have to check that one out too, after I’ve read about 100 pages in Bloggers on the Bus (Title invokes memories of an old classic by Timothy Crouse that I never heard of: “Boys on the Bus”,  about the writers who tagged along with campaigns to “get a feel” for the politics and issues and lives of the candidates amongst the people on the campaign trail. 

The first third of this book chronicles the startups of several now famed blogs and Social Networking experiments.  An Obama MySpace page,  and how the Obama administration blew it with him by being clueless….Robert Greenwald’s campaigns against Fox News (which ,  when I saw this in my first perusal of the book,  decided it was a keeper…since I absolutely loathe Fox News).

Also chronicled are Atrios, Digby,  Huffington Post,  and more.  The book reminds me a lot of the Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi’s 2004 book,  The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.  But now ,  5 years later,  that revolution has become televised in another way via YouTube.

Books like this (and this one is well written),  tend to get my net-geek/activist juices flowing ,  but my activism is focused on how the church can leverage Social Networking to help its people connect with the important people and resources,  and have someone to talk to at literally all hours of the day and night.  Expect to see me posting more from here on,  as the Social Networking excitement flows through several organizations and enables communications of a sort never before known.  (Don’t take that to signal that I am a Netopian, because my optimism is based in the assumption that the church will be the Net Roots that drive the kind of renewal of revived interpersonal and social relationships, and along with that,  and through that,  a political movement of a different sort ;  a politic driven by the kind of world a people of God envision as they explore together a discernment of how to be Kingdom of God people.