Gil, your premise here is off. It is primary time, and these lefties are all vying in the leftosphere for any face time they can get. Once the nomination is sewn up, you won't be seeing any one of these candidates frequenting a far left group like kos.

Unlikely. John Kerry and Al Gore are quite active. I'm on their mailing lists.

Too bad there is so much crap to root through in blogworld to glean even a kernel of reasonable and reasoned discourse.

And maybe it doesn't completely satisfy the purists on both ends. But my perception, and TalkBackers can tell me if I'm wrong, is that people who have become angered by old media in THIS town are angered specifically because they feel as if they and their opinions have been dismissed - not that their point of view hasn't been heeded, but that it hasn't been respected, hasn't even been listened to.

Your Sunday News editor is rather selective with LTE's however he does read and occasionally comments on our opinions in his weekly missive. TalkBack provides an outlet that the Sunday News cannot.

Again, when the opinion is YOU SUKKK!, no - that's not going to garner any respect. But with the convention center issue in particular, I've long had the uneasy feeling that out of opposition to this one issue has risen what might be seen as an entirely new movement; one that might not have existed, or might not have existed in so concentrated a form, without the galvanizing issue, but one that will ultimately transcend that issue. That movement and the people who might call themselves members of it tend to be, actually, the most voracious consumers of our product. And from that perspective, it's a bad idea to belittle, dismiss and ultimately alienate them. We're at a time when we ought to be building bridges rather than setting fire to them.

Well, you're right of course. There's a lot of garbage out there, and that's one reason old media has been wary of embracing the form - for every blog that's well written, is or attempts to be insightful and actually attempts to contribute something to the discourse, there's another that consists of variations on the theme: YOU SUKKK! And so you need to separate the wheat from the chaff, and as you note - as a blog reader, it's a big much to ask anyone to wade through a flood of garbage to find the occasional pearl.

That's where some sort of alliance between old and new media can come in. Again, the Yearly Kos pic - had the confab of candidates been sponsored by the NY Times Magazine, specifically and solely by old media, the blog types might well have sneered at it. Had it been sponsored solely by new media, old media might have been tempted to dismiss it completely. But when there's a working together of sorts - when the grassroots advocacy and passion of the new media can be combined with the resources, both material and professional, of old media - then you DO have something new under the sun.

And maybe it doesn't completely satisfy the purists on both ends. But my perception, and TalkBackers can tell me if I'm wrong, is that people who have become angered by old media in THIS town are angered specifically because they feel as if they and their opinions have been dismissed - not that their point of view hasn't been heeded, but that it hasn't been respected, hasn't even been listened to.

Again, when the opinion is YOU SUKKK!, no - that's not going to garner any respect. But with the convention center issue in particular, I've long had the uneasy feeling that out of opposition to this one issue has risen what might be seen as an entirely new movement; one that might not have existed, or might not have existed in so concentrated a form, without the galvanizing issue, but one that will ultimately transcend that issue. That movement and the people who might call themselves members of it tend to be, actually, the most voracious consumers of our product. And from that perspective, it's a bad idea to belittle, dismiss and ultimately alienate them. We're at a time when we ought to be building bridges rather than setting fire to them.

I sort of have this idea, and I've not discussed it with anyone here, and I'm sure they'd think it a bad idea for liability reasons, if no other - that one way to do that would be for someone like me, in this space, to hand over the blog keys when I'm on vaction, for example. Many/most of the blogs I read do this - Andrew Sullivan, for example, often takes periods of August off, and this month he's left his blog - on the corporate The Atlantic site - to four other bloggers. The blog, therefore, continues to get the traffic, those writing in his absence get greater exposure, a chance to have their own ideas heard - to perhaps establish or further establish themselves in their own right. Both sides win. But, none of the guest bloggers use their time to try and bring The Atlantic to its knees. And no, I don't know how liability would work. It's just an idea - but one I think could help bridge a widening gap.