The American Mind

Mark March 18 on your calendar. Why? Because Brian Fraley said so. WisPolitics is hosting the inaugural WisPolitics/WisOpinion Blog Summit. Here’s the line up of famous, semi-famous (this is the blogosphere we’re talking about), and notables:

• Ann Althouse
• Charlie Sykes
• Ed Garvey
• Brian Fraley
• State Rep. Mark Pocan
• Jessica McBride
• John McAdams

Ooo. It looks like a line up from a random broadcast of Sykes’ Sunday Insight tv show.

Let me inform the powers that be that the beauty, interest, and dare I say it, power of the blogosphere isn’t from people already involved in politics and media jumping onto the “next big thing.” Its power comes from empowering voices of people who previously didn’t have a voice or the ability to be easily heard.

Ann Althouse is smart and has a good weblog (she’s on my blogroll), but she doesn’t take on Wisconsin issues. She comments on national and international issues and rarely links to Wisconsin webloggers. She’s not involved with the Wisconsin blogosphere be able to address the state of it. I don’t want to have this sound like an insult toward Althouse but it’s like Judith Miller keynoting the conference announcing Pajamas Media to the world. WisPolitics must have felt they needed some “big-name” weblogger to give their summit heft and Althouse is conveniently over in Madison.

Who’s missing from the list above? There’s not a single member fo the Badger Blog Alliance on that list. It’s only the most important collective in the Wisconsin blogosphere. It’s members gave life to the Milwaukee voter fraud story last year.

One person who would be perfect for the summit is Boots & Sabers‘ Owen Robinson. For state issues from a conservative perspective there’s no better place to go. The guy not only has connections, is passionate, and can write, but he also does a darn good job speaking.

Or how about letting Fred at RealDebateWisconsin talk about how he turned his weblog into a one-man investigative reporting department by digging into Voces de la Frontera’s harassment of State Senator Cathy Sepp?

Now, I’ll look at how long the panelists have been in the blogosphere. State Sen. Pocan has only been posting since 01.03.06. Garvey has three years under his belt. Althouse, two years. Sykes, three-and-a-half. McBride, eight months. McAdams, consistently one year. Fraley, three months. TAM has been running for over six years. 74 months to be exact. That compares to a combined 127 months of those “vaunted” summit participants. That averages out to a little over 18 months of weblogging experience per weblogger.

Who has a better perspective? Who has the experience dealing with a new medium without having an already-existing audience from which to get readers (Althouse excepted)?

I do not blame the participants one bit for attending. If WisPolitics invited me to speak I would have jumped at the chance. My gripe isn’t with the webloggers. It’s with a mentality that can’t see new, unique voices beyond what’s in front of your face or who you’re talking to on a daily basis.

P.S. [I'm starting to feel like Mickey Kaus] Who will be the weblogger of the year? I’m confident it will be one of the people above. It certainly isn’t me, and after publishing this post my chances of ever getting it are less than zero.