BlogHer Continues Political Coverage, Including Blogs by Michelle Obama and Carly Fiorina
2008-08-20 15:10:06 -
- Racepoint Group Kristina Joss, 415-694-6709 blogher@racepointgroup.com or BlogHer Inc. Elisa Camahort Page, 408-504-5708 elisa@blogher.org BlogHer, Inc. (www.blogher.com), one of the top women's online networks and the Web's number-one guide to blogs by women, today announced that both presidential campaigns have committed to blog regularly on BlogHer.com, and select BlogHer contributing editors will be actively reporting from the upcoming political conventions in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul. These announcements follow months of political initiatives led by BlogHer, including exclusive interviews with Barack Obama and Carly Fiorina answering important policy questions from the community, and the development of a widget tracking women who blog politics from across the political spectrum (blogher.com/politics). Michelle Obama also posted her first blog post on the site, entitled "Let's talk."
"Interest in Election 2008 -- even across blogs we've never heard mention politics before -- is extraordinary and growing," said Lisa Stone, CEO and co-founder of BlogHer. "BlogHer's omni-partisan coverage and strong community guidelines have created a unique environment that encourages policy discussion and civil debate by women across the political spectrum. BlogHer is a grassroots forum where, among other things, candidates can communicate directly with women who vote, and voters can answer back."
To date, BlogHer has welcomed Michelle Obama; Becky Carroll, women's outreach director for the Barack Obama campaign; Carly Fiorina, victory '08 chairman for the RNC; Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior policy advisor on domestic issues for the John McCain presidential campaign; and Liz Mair, RNC online communications director, to its list of community bloggers. Both camps have officially committed to contributing regular blog posts and to engage women online on the policy issues that are important to them.
New media will have unprecedented access to the 2008 political conventions, as the Democratic National Convention is credentialing nearly three times as many bloggers as in 2004 based on individual merits such as Web traffic, number of RSS feeds and content. Three BlogHer bloggers are credentialed to attend the DNC in Denver from August 25-28 and four are credentialed to attend the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul from September 1-4. BlogHer will be arranging on-camera interviews with notable attendees at each event, starting with a scheduled interview with top Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett in Denver. The bloggers will be posting regular, live reports to BlogHer.com and asking the community to submit questions and requests to help shape BlogHer's coverage of the conventions. In addition, C-SPAN has made distribution arrangements with several credentialed bloggers, BlogHer among them, and will be linking to BlogHer's convention coverage.
"We love seeing women using C-SPAN's political coverage to stay informed about issues," said Susan Swain, co-president of C-SPAN. "We think Convention Hub will give BlogHer's readers fast access to important video from the two political conventions and at the same time, the Hub's 'Bloggers Roundup' will introduce new readers to the issues you cover."
BlogHer remains committed to non-partisanship, offering representatives from both campaigns equal opportunities to engage with its community of more than 9 million well-educated, influential and politically savvy individuals. Most recently, BlogHer conducted podcast interviews with Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, and Maria Vitale, education director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, to discuss the role of reproductive health in this year's election. The interviews, which can be found on BlogHer.com, emphasize the company's dedication to representing the full ideological spectrum of the members of the BlogHer community.
"We will continue to provide content that engages the broad spectrum of women who are a part of the BlogHer community, as we work against the stereotype that all women think, write or vote alike," said Stone.
About BlogHer
Founded in February 2005 by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, BlogHer's mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. BlogHer provides the number-one community and media network of blogs by women via a community hub (blogher.com), annual conferences and an advertising network of more than 2,200 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer provides the highest quality content on a range of topics, with all blogs continually edited to meet strict editorial standards, including content quality, category relevance and blog frequency. In July 2008, BlogHer entered into a strategic partnership with iVillage, part of Women@NBCU, which includes other NBC Universal brands including Bravo and Oxygen. The partnership also includes an investment by Peacock Equity, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance's Media, Communications and Entertainment business, and returning investor Venrock.
Leading Women's Online Network Engages Ideologically Diverse
Members in Community-Driven Discussion of 2008 Presidential Campaign
