Mark THIS DATE in your book, journalism students, because it’s the day blogging has come of age.
Today is when a blogger goes to the White House, not as someone being thrown a political bone to meet the President, but on a full-fledged daily press pass…
This is truly a day when blogging moves from being an exotic army of boisterous citizens with laptops holding torches as they storm the castle to slay the story monster towards a day when blogging becomes an integral part of what journalism schools talk about and perhaps even eventually teach. The New York Times reports:
Another signal moment for bloggers is to occur this morning, when Garrett M. Graff, who writes a blog about the news media in Washington, is to be ushered into the White House briefing room to attend the daily press “gaggle.”
Mr. Graff, 23, may be the first blogger in the short history of the medium to be granted a daily White House pass for the specific purpose of writing a blog, or Web log. A White House spokesman said yesterday that he believed Mr. Graff was the first blogger to be given credentials.
He is being given a press pass as the editor of FishbowlDC, a blog that is published by Mediabistro.com, which offers networking and services for journalists.
Increasingly, bloggers are penetrating the preserves of the mainstream news media. They have secured seats on campaign planes, at political conventions and in presidential debates, and have become a driving force in news events themselves.
And, YES…Jeff Gannon did have an influence:
Mr. Graff said he was inspired to try to seek access to the White House by the controversy over James D. Guckert, who used the alias Jeff Gannon. Mr. Guckert was granted daily passes to White House briefings while writing for a Web site run by a Republican operative in Texas. The episode raised questions about who was a legitimate journalist and how access to the White House was granted.
White House press officials and others said it was relatively easy to get a day pass, prompting Mr. Graff to test that premise. He set about trying to get one and chronicled his attempt on his blog.
He made 20 phone calls and got nowhere. Bigger blogs picked up on his saga, and traffic on FishbowlDC increased tenfold, he said. But it was not until the traditional media joined in, Mr. Graff said, that the White House relented.
“USA Today started making calls on Thursday. CNN mentioned it on ‘Inside Politics,’ and Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents Association, raised the issue with the White House Press Office,” he said. “I think a combination of all of that made the White House pay attention and decide to let me in.”
I assume Jeff Gannon had to go through all of this, too…
UPDATE: On the other hand, there are some who argue that this particular case is no reason to celebrate.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.