[Posted by Elena Sytcheva]

Eric Boehlert’s Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press investigates the cutting-edge coverage of liberal politics during the 2008 presidential campaign, presenting colorful portraits of its major players, some well known, others less so. The cast of characters includes:

Heather Parton, aka Digby

Blog: Hullabaloo
Background: Studied theater at San Jose State, and worked in the film business at Chris Blackwell’s Island Pictures, Polygram, and Artisan.
More about: She emerged as a voice for the progressive community and had a small hand in changing the face of Democratic politics, while shocking the male-dominated blogosphere when it came out that she was a woman.
Boehlert says: “She had always been a political junkie, and the chance to host an ongoing, in-depth discussion with curious and articulate readers was pure heaven for her. For years she had observed politics with great interest, devouring books on the subject, and was well prepared to start discussing politics publicly. Thanks to her lucid take-downs and insightful analysis, Digby was instantly admired and toasted among the best essayists in the entire overeducated liberal blogosphere. ‘She’s the best writer in our little gang,’ Markos at Daily Kos told me. . . . Her work represented the kind of smart, tough-minded analysis that liberals online craved but searched in vain to find in the mainstream press.”
In her own words: “The Internet became available just as American politics turned batshit crazy.” On blogging: “I had no idea that I had the capacity. I was astounded, number one, that I could do it. And number two, that people liked it and got something out of it.”

Glenn Greenwald

Blog: Originally Unclaimed Territory; now blogs at Salon.com
Background: He graduated from George Washington University, studied law at New York University, and became a constitutional law and civil rights litigator. He is now a contributing writer at Salon.
More about: Greenwald criticized Obama for his stance on wiretapping and immunity and nearly single-handedly elevated the wiretapping FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) issue to national importance, forcing candidates to take notice.
Boehlert says: “He’s the one providing constant adult supervision over the blogosphere. His posts are deadly serious and often much more earnest than those of his colleagues. The illustration of Greenwald that appears on his site shows him sitting ramrod straight with his arms crossed and wearing a dress shirt and tie. Very unbloggy. . . . His takedowns, which often unfolded over days via multiple posts, with Greenwald returning to rhetorically pound his foe again and again, were epic. That’s why he got dubbed ‘Glennzilla’ online. Greenwald notched more clear knockout wins in his belt than perhaps any other blogger.”
Digby says: “Greenwald changed blogging. . . . I didn’t know that somebody could come along at that late date, do blogging in a completely different way, and become a sensation. Glenn truly was an overnight blogging sensation. People loved his work immediately.”

John Aravosis

Blog: AmericaBlog
Background: Aravosis is a prominent online writer who founded AmericaBlog. He has a joint law and foreign services degree from Georgetown University.
More about: AmericaBlog is one of the netroots’ most popular sites. Criticized Hillary Clinton during the primaries (wrote one post addressed to her titled: “Go Away You Horrible Human Being.”; his site “became something of an anti-Clinton hotbed during the primaries.” Aravosis criticized Obama’s plan to appear with an antigay singer at South Carolina rallies.
Boehlert says: “Bloggers actually caught a break while lobbying Obama on FISA in late October. At that time controversy had erupted when the liberal blogger John Aravosis at AmericaBlog unleashed a wave of Obama attacks, widely echoed across the blogosphere, after the candidate scheduled an on-stage appearance at South Carolina ‘Embrace the Change’ rallies with the strident antigay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who claimed that homosexuality was a ‘curse’ that could be cured.”
In his own words: “The fact is [Sen. Hillary Clinton's] supporters throw aroudn the misogyny card a lot more than Obama supporters throw out the race card. There are a lot of people who don’t hate Hillary…[but] have been turned off because they actually see a few things that worry them about her as a candidate. … The best way to treat someone as a Hillary-hater is to treat them as one.”  “It’s pretty clear the [Obama] campaign does not want to do a lot of outreach to the blogs.”

John Amato

Blog: Crooks and Liars
Background: Former professional rock saxophonist.
More about: Years before YouTube, Amato changed blogging forever by unleashing his TiVo and figuring out how to post TV clips online.
Boehlert says: “The path Amato took nobody would ever have tried to map out as a way for liberals to create their own media platform: a way to create a progressive movement in America. But Amato, it turned out, was the right person at the right time with the right mixture of creativity and passion. His site, Crooks and Liars, revolutionized political blogging when he was the first to bring video to the blogosphere.”
In his own words: “I was YouTube before there was YouTube!”

Duncan Black, aka Atrios

Blog: Eschaton
Background: Black was an economics professor at the University of California at Irvine and Bryn Mawr College. He is currently a senior fellow at the progressive think tank Media Matters for America.
More about: Black created a liberal space that allowed him to criticize Republicans and the press while pointing the liberal community toward important stories and issues. Paul Krugman name-dropped Atrios in his influential New York Times column in late 2002, the same year Eschaton was dubbed Best Blog by liberal readers across the Internet.
Boehlert says: “Black was the guy who, day in and day out, helped point the community toward important stories and issues. He served as an early blogosphere aggregate, somebody who posted lots of links each day and included minimal topspin. Rather than being an outlet for commentary, Eschaton served as a clearinghouse for the online liberal Zeitgeist. It became, as one reader put it, ‘liberal-Democrat central.’”
In his own words: “It’s all very strange when you sit back for a few seconds and think about what [the blogosphere] has become. The fact that in some ways it’s become institutionalized and has become so mainstream. And the fact that congressional staffers worry about what bloggers say. What blogs on the left have managed to do is stitch together a kind of coherent running narrative from the liberal perspective, which wasn’t there before. There’s a connective tissue that we kind of provide: this network, this web, between institutions, which didn’t have a way of listening to each other before.”

Jane Hamsher

Blog: Firedoglake
Background: Hamsher graduated from the University of Southern California, interned at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, wrote the book Killer Instinct, and produced films such as Natural Born Killers.
More about: Hamsher didn’t leave the coverage of the Lewis “Scooter” Libby perjury trial to the mainstream press corps. Instead she revolutionized the rules of journalism by live-blogging the controversial saga with a team of Firedoglake bloggers who typed up real-time accounts of the legal arguments as they unfolded in court.
Boehlert says: “During her post-Hollywood blogging career, Hamsher launched a new advertising company to help boost online ad revenue, created a weekly online book salon that became a must stop for lefty authors, helped raise a ton of money for deserving progressive congressional candidates, and reached out to labor unions on behalf of the blogosphere. She also refined journalism by live-blogging the Scooter Libby trial, helped drive Connecticut’s increasingly conservative, pro-war senator, Joe Lieberman, out of the Democratic Party, and turned the vibrant FDL site into one of the most influential stops in the liberal blogosphere.”
In her own words: “I thought this would be great if the race went on, and we could talk about Democratic issues and have more debates and put the issues front and center that people really care about. But then you see those diaries over at Daily Kos and you see what the conversation has devolved into, and it’s not getting any better. Its gotten way more emotional than people ever thought—very personal.”

Joshua Micah Marshall

Blog: Talking Points Memo
Background: He received a Ph.D. in American history from Brown University, then worked as a political journalist.
More about: Marshall created Talking Points Memo, a favorite destination for online progressives that features breaking political news as well as thoughtful commentary. While she was on the air the night of the New Hampshire primary, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow quoted TPM’s analysis on Clinton’s surprise strong showing in the state, which led to the Chris Matthews statement “I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again” and the ensuing “Tweety Effect” controversy. (“Tweety” being the netroots nickname for Matthews.)
Boehlert says: “How had Clinton engineered such a miraculous showing? What did that mean for the unfolding democratic race? At Talking Points Memo, the editor and founder, Josh Marshall, a 39-year-old with a Ph.D. from Brown University in colonial American history, was wrestling with those questions. He was also receiving emails from readers offering their interpretations of the night’s unexpected results. One popular theory held that it was the media’s fault. Marshall decided that the emails, from self-identified Obama supporters, merited wider attention.”

Arianna Huffington

Blog: The Huffington Post
Background: Has been a political celebrity since the 1990s, when her billionaire husband, Michael Huffington, ran for the U.S. Senate. She is a noted author and syndicated newspaper columnist.
More about: Huffington started the Huffington Post, which provided bloggers with a seat at the larger mass-media table with its wide readership. It also offered a media counterbalance to right-wing outlets such as the GOP-friendly Drudge Report.
Boehlert says: “From the time she first started writing about the emerging blogosphere, Arianna Huffington fell in love with the new generation of know-it-alls. She loved their abrasive style and the way bloggers relished skewering sacred cows, especially those in the press. She also loved that OCD quality, the idea of hitting one topic over and over and over. For years, while writing her syndicated newspaper column, she had been monumentally frustrated by her editors telling her she could not return to the same topic again and again . . . Huffington admired how bloggers often wrote about the war more than once a day, even once an hour.”
In her own words: “We would go have pizza parties with bloggers and I was in heaven and I would just sit there and talk obsessively about everything. . . . I just love learning and being part of that conversation. And to me it didn’t matter if that conversation was held over pizza, or great wines over at David Geffen’s.”

Howie Klein

Blog: Down with Tyranny!
Background: Klein attended college at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Formerly the president of Reprise Records, he was one of the most successful record executives of his generation, as well as a noted defender of artistic integrity and free speech.
More about: Klein wrote about his passion for congressional candidates and eventually started vetting candidates for the Blue America Political Action Committee. He interviewed potential candidates and if they passed his test—which was generally a lengthy phone interview—they landed the Blue America seal of approval and the blogs would encourage readers to donate to the candidate. This revolutionized fund-raising for progressive legislators but also drained financial contributions from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which traditionally controlled the purse strings.
Boehlert says: “Klein would never use the term ‘power broker’ to describe himself or his humble netroots activism. He’d stress that he represented just one of many important, dedicated players online who were trying to grow a progressive movement. But the fact remains that for aspiring liberal candidates for Congress, as well as their campaign managers and especially fund-raisers, Klein has emerged as a key go-to guy for progressives nationwide who want to tap into vibrant liberals online, who want to establish a progressive base, raise money, create an early grassroots buzz, and who maybe want to circumvent the Democratic Party establishment in a way that had been unthinkable just two election cycles earlier.”
In his own words: “When historians look back they’ll say, ‘Well, the election was a natural pendulum swing away from the Republicans because of their excesses.’ But the blogosphere played a big role. The work done by Markos, the work done by Matt Stoller, the work done by MoveOn, the work done by both Robert and Glenn Greenwald. The work done by John Amato and Jane Hamsher, who have certainly built up tremendous sites with huge numbers of very sophisticated readers. There are so many people working so hard, it’s just mind-boggling. It’s such an inspiration.”

Chris Bowers

Blog: Originally MyDD; now OpenLeft
Background: A former Temple University English professor.
More about: He used his role as an influential blogger at OpenLeft during the primaries and general election and urged readers to demand that democratic candidates articulate their positions on the FISA bill.
Boehlert says: “Soon Bowers’s life revolved around blogging. He loved the free Internet connection at work so much that he often slept on his office floor so he’d have an entire night’s worth of uninterrupted blogging.”
In his own words: “I blog, therefore I am.” “The political zeitgeist that the progressive blogosphere first seized upon five or six years ago was released into the population at large and came back, unexpectedly, as the Barack Obama campaign.” “If you have no children, no one to support, and no career ambitions, then you too can become a full-time progressive blogger, as long as you’re willing to do nothing else in your entire life.” He later amended this to include other key job qualifications: “If you don’t care about having a social life. If you don’t mind being viciously attacked dozens of times every day. If you don’t have a wide range of interests in life. If you don’t mind paying for your own health insurance. If you don’t like taking vacations. If a one-bedroom apartment in West Philly is your idea of high living.”

Matt Stoller

Blog: My DD; then OpenLeft
Background: Stoller spent his undergraduate years at Harvard writing for the Lampoon, the campus humor magazine.
More about: He used his role as an agenda-setting blogger to write about the Democratic Party debate in Nevada that was to be cosponsored by Fox News, and participated in a conference call with Senator Harry Reid and influential bloggers that led to the debate being canceled. He also spearheaded netroots support for more progressive democratic candidates such as Donna Edwards in 2008.
Boehlert says: “Stoller threw himself into the progressive movement after the Iraq war was launched and became something of an online wunderkind, displaying a behind-the-scenes gift for organizing and agitating. Out front, Stoller distinguished himself as an influential blogger, known for his aggressive left politics, his distrust of Hillary Clinton (soon replaced by his distrust of Barack Obama), and his disdain for weak-kneed compromise.”
In his own words: “There’s clearly no one in the Obama campaign who is communicating with us. They don’t care what we think. They have other channels they care about, including a whole network of grassroots organizers. That’s fine. That’s their choice. They’ve made it, there’s not much any of us can do. Just know that their logistical operations are remarkable, their campaign structure is phenomenal, and we’re not a part of it.”

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

Blog: Daily Kos
Background: An army veteran who previously worked at a Web-development firm.
More: As one of the first liberal bloggers, he founded Daily Kos, which quickly became a must-read for progressives and pioneered the larger liberal netroots movement. Along with Stoller, he was one of the influential bloggers who participated in the conference call with Senator Harry Reid to help quash the Democratic Party debate that would have been cosponsored by Fox News. Author of two books, Taking on the System and the seminal Crashing the Gate, co-authored with Jerome Armstrong.
Boehlert says: “That fledgling online site [Daily Kos] was launched in 2002 by an army vet named Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who at the time was stuck at a Web-development firm helping corporate clients he despised. Often noisy, contentious, and brawling with his snide and argumentative attacks, Kos, as he is universally known online, quickly gave voice to the howls of protest on the Left during the Bush administration.”
In his own words: “My site is for fighters. It’s designed to gin up passions. I’m not about to tone it down because someone might be offended somewhere. The reason Daily Kos has been as successful as it has been is because it’s a place for passionate activists, not conflict-averse weenies.”

Jerome Armstrong

Blog: MyDD
Background: Armstrong worked for many campaigns, including Howard Dean’s run for the presidency. He is the coauthor of the book Crashing the Gate.
More about: He founded the pioneering site MyDD, which became one of the liberal hubs that sparked the creation of a larger liberal netroots movement. He also coined the term “netroots.”
Boehlert says/In his own words: “It was Armstrong who first coined the term ‘netroots’ to describe the emerging people-powered online political community. ‘O.K., so Dean is still polling 1 to 4 percent nationally, so what. Look at the netroots,’ Armstrong blogged on December 18, 2002.”

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