Last November, I wrote about how I went from being a political blogger, to being a political candidate and then an elected official because I won my race. Alan Rosenblatt and I then worked to compile a list of similar cases and found less than two handfuls.
A Politico reporter researched and wrote and Politico published, More Bloggers Throwing Hats in the Ring on Wednesday. It’s got some nice overview information about the gentle wave (20 political bloggers running for office, out of millions of political bloggers total and who knows how many hyper-local positions out there is not quite a trend yet, IMO).
Those are the objective reasons to read the story: it’s a topic that deserves attention: given how prolific and critical many political bloggers are, at all levels, why aren’t more running for office? I’d love to see a survey of this. What’s keeping them from running? Is it blogging or is it elected office or campaigning, or a combination? I just really would have thought that there’d be more folks who’d run – are there and if there aren’t, why not, and can we change that (should we change that!?)?
But also, I’m disappointed in the article’s failure to mention, describe and/or identify more than two women political bloggers who have or are running for office (and I’m not one of those two – you can read my personal critique of that omission in What Would You Do? Guess Whose Name Was Left Out of Politico Article?).
The most egregious omission is Ariana Kelly. Why so egregious? Because the article gives a huge photo shot placement to Judd Legum who is a political blogger running for a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates. And he gets four mentions and several sentences (space – lots of space for Judd; full disclosure – I don’t know either of these people and they certainly don’t know me).
And guess what? Ariana Kelly is a political blogger running for a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates.
But no mention of her. Whatsoever. Seriously – how hard would it have been, in an article that generally speaking is supposed to be about political bloggers who run for office, and are running right now, that features one political blogger running for the Maryland House of Delegates, to mention that there are, you know, TWO political bloggers running for the Maryland House of Delegates, one in the 30th District, Judd Legum, and one in the 16th District, Ariana Kelly?
Editorial filtering. Pretty widely accepted and acknowledged. But in this case, why this kind of filtering that distorts the reality and creates a perception, yet again, that women aren’t there or are in the minority or a novelty or just less…deserving of the space, as I was told was the reason my name wasn’t included and only my 5800 person city’s name was.
Fascinating topic. Fascinating filtering. Would love more answers about both.