by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
In previous installments, I've been critical of the blogosphere's tendencies to allow the whims that dominate the cable news cycle to infect blog coverage, since the spats and gossip that hits the television often has close to zero news value. Ditto for fundraising, though at least the fundraising numbers give some indication of the breadth and depth of a candidate's support among donors.
This time, though, things were different. The "Clinton/1984" YouTube mashup received some coverage, but not a lot. Bloggers paid some attention, but mostly ignored it (especially the top traffic bloggers, who made almost no mention of the video or "controversy"), because it either had little news value, didn't reveal any new information, or wasn't directly tied to a campaign. It didn't generate half the news spike that the Obama staffers/Clinton staffers/David Gefen fracas generated only a few weeks earlier. The only major events that affected the rate of coverage were Elizabeth Edwards' cancer announcement and the fundraising reports. I tend to agree with the criticism of the fundraising horse-race game "news" pieces, but obviously it's not going to go away tomorrow, so everyone gets a pass on that one. So, not a bad two weeks; kudos to everyone! Less campaign BS and more substance!
Here's a graph of recent blog posting rates for Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.
