Actually, the Story Is Cold Dead, but BSB Keeps Pounding on It's Chest Anyway.

First off, congratulations to the new Buckeye State team of Nick D and David Potts for a seamless transition to a new regime. They have embraced many of the virtues of previous Head BSer Jerid, and minimized his vices. Also, congrats for securing credentials for the Democratic National Convention in the General Blogger Pool.

All that said, quit yer goddam whining about Ohio Daily getting the nod for State Bloggercorps credentials. For those of you who don't know what this is about, Paul reset the "controversy" here when it first sputtered. You might think that when the DNC decided to acknowledge the importance of blogs and offered credentials to one of our own that we would all be happy and that the success of one is a positive reflection on the work we all do.

Dude, that is so 2006.

In Nick's announcement that they received General Pool credentials, he maintains that the story of BSB being passed over "will not die" and links to two stories, one in a WaPo blog and one on Wired. Actually there are three stories at work here. One is the story of the state blogger corps being overwhelmingly white. That's the focus of the WaPo story. A second is the story of some state blogger corps blogs actually being corporate owned as opposed to the DailyKos first raised that complaint which is the focus of the Wired piece.

Then there is the story of two quality blogs in the state of Ohio competing for state credentials and the loser raising a fuss. That angle is mentioned nowhere in any of the stories linked above. BSB is mentioned nowhere in either of the stories linked by Nick. In fact, at last count about five people, all in Ohio, give a crap.

But in their zeal to cry "We wuz robbed," the BS partisans are both linking their cause to real issues and dropping facile slams on Jeff Coryell, including resetting the meme first launched by Russo that all Jeff does is post press releases.

All bull. Jeff may be the hardest working man in blog business. He travels all over the state, has interviewed scores of candidates and other figures and offers plenty of analysis. Posting press releases is also part of the the current SOP for political blogs, though his presser posting is not significantly greater than either BSB and certainly less than ProgressOhio.

Bottom line, there's plenty of niches for different blogs to fill. Jeff represents what could be called the grown-up sector of the blogosphere. BSB is a little more shoot-from-the-hip, a little more reckless. That's fine and all -- part of what makes blogging great is the diversity of voices. But people shouldn't be shocked shocked if they live to give a finger to the establishment and the establishment doesn't love them for it.

In any event, I for one and happy that the DNC found room for both blogs under the big tent and am proud to be part of the blog world with both.