HuffPo, NewAssignment.net Create Group Blogs for '08 Candidates

[Flabbergasted]

HuffPo, NewAssignment.net Create Group Blogs for '08 Candidates

By E&P Staff

Published: March 28, 2007 11:35 AM ET

NEW YORK The Huffington Post has teamed up with NYU professor Jay Rosen's nascent NewAssignment.net to create group blogs for the 2008 presidential candidates.

Called "The Wisdom of Crowds Hits the Campaign Trail," the project will recruit "large groups of citizen journalists from around the country to cover the major presidential candidates" on a group of blogs, each of which will be dedicated to a specific candidate. These contributors will provide "written updates, campaign tidbits, on-the-scene observations, photos, or original video."

"We'll have a Clinton blog, an Obama blog, an Edwards blog, a McCain blog, a Giuliani blog, a Romney blog, a Biden blog, a Richardson blog, a Dodd blog, a Kucinich blog, a Brownback blog, a Huckabee blog," writes Arianna Huffington in a post explaining the collaboration. "Each offering a wide variety of voices and perspectives on the campaign they are following. These group blogs will also be a compendium of useful information about each candidate, including their latest speeches, upcoming appearances, new videos and ads, recent news articles and more."

In a post on his own PressThink blog, Rosen writes that "Instead of one well-placed reporter trailing John Edwards wherever he goes (which is one way of doing it) some 40 or 50 differently-placed people tracking different parts of the Edwards campaign, all with peculiar beats and personal blogs linked together by virtue of having a common editor and a page through which the best and most original stuff filters out to the greater readership of the Web, especially via the Huffington Post."

The 12 new blogs will be launched "sometime this Spring" according to Rosen.


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