TMV Posts To Be Featured On Newsweek’s New “The Ruckus” Newsweek/MBA Group Politics Blog

The Moderate Voice is now one of 9 weblogs providing campaign story-related content to The Ruckus, a new political group blog created by Newsweek.com and the Media Bloggers Association which you can see here.

Here’s part of the text of the announcement:

(NEW YORK) Media Bloggers Association (MBA) and Newsweek have launched “The Ruckus,” a new group blog about politics for Newsweek.com. The blog will feature posts from nine MBA-member bloggers about the presidential campaign on a single page, giving Newsweek.com readers a convenient sampling of some of the best political blogging from across the country and from key primary states.

” ‘The Ruckus’ places Newsweek on the cutting edge of this campaign season’s online political dialogue,” said Robert Cox, president of MBA. “MBA bloggers offer Newsweek readers fresh, authentic content with real-time updates from some of the nation’s leading political blogs.”

” ‘The Ruckus’ will be a key part of our 2008 campaign coverage,” said Deidre Depke, editor of Newsweek.com. “We want to expose Newsweek readers to all the exciting discourse and discussion that is taking place on political blogs today. We think ‘The Ruckus’ will help introduce readers to a new array of voices and will encourage enlightened political discourse as the ’08 race steps into high gear.”

“The Ruckus” (http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/theruckus/default.aspx) will include posts related to the 2008 campaign from MBA-member bloggers with a variety of political views and backgrounds, representing different parts of the country.

This is a special honor for TMV because our selection was a surprise and because of why we were told were were selected.

TMV was created nearly four years ago and grew into a blog that tried to assemble a group of people who were centrist, center right and center left who might not even agree with each other but who would be free to post what they wanted and focus on issues and events. The goal would be to try and step back as much as possible in some posts and often link to people who might not agree with us.

The idea — not always easy or implemented in the passion of political controversy — was to try and offer a bit more balance when possible and to maintain warm and respectful ties with those of differing views who sought to maintain warm and respectful ties with us.

Two weeks ago I learned that TMV had been on a list submitted to Newsweek, and selected from that list as one of the 9 participating blogs for the very reasons that were our goals.

The initial participants in “The Ruckus” include: John Amato, crooksandliars.com; Faye Anderson, andersonatlarge.typepad.com; Dean Barker, bluehampshire.com; Adam Fogle, palmettoscoop.com; Joe Gandelman, themoderatevoice.com; James Joyner, outsidethebeltway.com; Ed Morrissey, captainsquartersblog.com; Oliver Willis, oliverwillis.com; and Chris Woods, bleedingheartland.com.

Several other thoughts:

(1) It is a great honor to be in this group of bloggers and to work on this project with MBA and Newsweek. We have linked to most of the bloggers above. Several have become great personal friends of many of us here at TMV as well as mentors. Ideology is not an issue in these friendships and these people don’t get angry if we write a post they disagree with.

(2) My name is on the list as a blogger that has been selected but that would NOT repeat NOT be the case if I were doing the blog alone. TMV really started to grow and get a solid reputation when the original three co-bloggers joined me, Michael Stickings, Greg Piper and Jack Grant. We’ve since had many more people write on TMV.

(3) Our participation is due to the thoughtful writers of differing viewpoints and from all over the world who now write on TMV. We have been told that MBA members and Newsweek staffers read TMV over the past few weeks before putting our name on the list and then selecting us. We had no idea this was going on.

“The Ruckus” isn’t going to be a permanent blog. But all of us here at TMV thank MBA and Newsweek for inviting us to be a part of it — and every single one of us will be doing our best to make sure it’s not just an innovative idea for Campaign 2008 but a highly successful one in terms of the product it offers to Newsweek readers.

OTHERS COMMENTING ON THE MBA NEWSWEEK PROJECT INCLUDE:
–Writes Like She Talks
–Ed Morrissey
–Beltway Blogroll
–James Joyner