The rise and rise of blogging

A good article by student journalist Sandra Dickson in Newswire discussing influence of political blogs in the election.

New Zealand’s most popular blogger, David Farrar, of Kiwiblog, agrees right-wing blogs in particular created a “sense of crisis around Winston”, and says bloggers can be motivated to dig deeper, while journalists are under time constraints.

Actually bloggers are also under time constraints if they want to break stories on their blogs - and we do. For free. Self-imposed constraints, mind you, but to get to the story first that's what you have to do.

Kiwiblog and fellow right blog Whale Oil were not prepared, for example, to take New Zealand First assurances about funding at face value.

“When New Zealand First said they’d paid $158,000 and it turned out to be to the Susan Couch Charitable Trusts, it was blogs that researched the trust and found out that two of the three trustees are Winston’s personal lawyers, that Susan Couch doesn’t have any control over the trust, she’s not named in the trust deeds.”

It was this humble blog that first reported some of that.