This sounds great, if only we could pick the blogs involved. politico would NOT be one of them. They don't report news, they spin it. :eyes:
Political Blogs Ready to Flood Campaign Trail
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: January 29, 2011
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who is flirting with a bid for president, has none of the usual campaign accoutrements. No tour bus, campaign manager or yard signs. Few Americans, in fact, even know his name.
What Mr. Pawlenty does have is a beat reporter from Politico chronicling every utterance and movement of his noncampaign: a 25-year-old named Kendra Marr, who followed him through subzero temperatures last week equipped with a salt-coated Chevrolet Malibu rental, a laptop and a hand-held video camera.
The New Hampshire primary is over a year away, and the first major candidate has yet to formally declare. Just don’t tell that to outlets like Politico, Talking Points Memo and RealClearPolitics, which are already planning to smother the 2012 campaign trail in a way they could never have imagined four years ago when they had far smaller staffs of bloggers and shoestring budgets.
With an eye toward earning greater respectability, this crop of political Web sites is hoping for more than just page views and traffic-driving links from the Drudge Report. They want to establish themselves as the Blogs on the Bus.
“We were a garage band in 2008, riffing on the fly,” said Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor and co-founder. “Now we’re a 200-person production, with a precise feel and plan.” more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/business/media/30blogs.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1296389461-T0fbU4FM/FQrm1rJQSzQPw