Bob Gibson with Charlottesville’s The Daily Progress covered the blogging conference hosted over the weekend by the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. I attended the first Summit but family obligations kept me from attending this one. Sounds like I missed a great event.
As a sign that Virginia’s political blogosphere is emerging as a significant factor in Virginia state politics, consider that this event was attended by Virginia’s lieutenant governor, attorney general and three members of the House of Delegates. Bolling’s remarks, as reported by Gibson, were revealing:
“A year ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was, and now I’m looking at blogs and reading blogs and I’m worrying about whether you are saying nice things or nasty things about me on blogs,” Lt. Gov. William T. Bolling told the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s second annual Summit on Blogging and Democracy. “Now I’m doing blog interviews.”
“Maybe this whole blogging thing has the potential of bringing back responsibility to campaigns,” Bolling told about 90 people Saturday afternoon. He urged the political bloggers to “hold us responsible once we get elected for doing the things we said we were going to do.”
Update
: Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, who attended the conference, has published her “random thoughts.” Read them here. She highlights an apparent division between “liberal” and “conservative” bloggers, which strikes me as an unfortunate development…. but probably inevitable. Bloggers, by their nature, are hyper-opinionated, thus prone to schism.