Apolitical Staples

I just had to set the record straight on a section of Warren Kinsella's column in the National Post today.

...Learning from errors past, the Tories didn't bash the CBC directly - but they certainly didn't prevent the well-organized "Blogging Tories" network from doing so, either.

The is wrong on many levels.
1) The Blogging Tories are not well-organized they are practically not organized at all. It is a group bloggers throughout the country who share a rough ideology point of view, with opinions to share and the desire to get those opinions out through a traffic sharing blogroll. There are no meetings, no heirarchy, no structure to formulate a message. In short, about as far away from on organization as you could get. It is a spontaneous virtual network.
2) They is no formal link between the Blogging Tories and the CPC. As such the CPC could not prevent the Blogging Tories from talking about anything. Some (all, I don't know, there is not enough organization to know) Blogging Tories receive emails from the CPC communications team, which are the same emails the media gets. No secret talking points just the same information the paid media receives.
3) Bashing the CBC? How about holding all media to account, that is one of the key reasons why the blogosphere developed in the first place. Do any political parties have to direct that? No, bloggers do that for free.
4) One last point, Mr. Kinsella's column is about a book called The Canadian Election of 2006 by Christopher Waddell and Christopher Dorman and especially a chapter in the book which shows that Canadians want "issues-based reporting - as opposed to process stories, he-said-she-said stenography and boring profiles of backroom strategists". Is it a coincidence that Canadians got more of that during a campaign were blogs first started to make an impact? Maybe, but maybe not. Pointing out the weakness of process stories is what the blogosphere does best so if a virtual network can push the media away from this then job well done.