Ouch. That Will Leave A Mark.
One of the organizers of the Yearly Kos Konvention acknowledges an embarrassing thing: the demographics. The confab was disproportionately white and male. And the Washington Post has run with that.
CHICAGO, Aug. 5 — It's Sunday, day 4 of Yearly Kos, the major conference for progressive bloggers, and Gina Cooper, the confab's organizer-in-chief, surveys the ballroom of the massive McCormick Place Convention Center. A few hundred remaining conventioneers are having brunch, dining on eggs, bagels and sausage.
Seven of the eight Democratic presidential candidates have paid their respects this weekend, and some 200 members of the credentialed press have filed their stories. A mere curiosity just two years ago, the progressive blogosphere has gone mainstream. But Cooper sees a problem.
"It's mostly white. More male than female," says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. "It's not very diverse."
There goes the open secret of the netroots, or those who make up the community of the Internet grass-roots movement.
For all the talk about the increasing influence of this growing group — "We are a community . . . a movement . . . an institution," Cooper said in a speech Saturday night — what gets scant attention is its demography. While the Huffington Post and Fire Dog Lake, both founded by women, are two of the most widely read blogs, the rock stars are mostly men, and many women bloggers complain of sexism and harassment in the blogosphere.
A black eye? Maybe, maybe not. But Rick Moran, who attended, is right about one thing for sure:
Lastly, I will sound this warning to the GOP and conservatives a lot between now and next summer. Ignore or make sport of the netroots at your own peril. Underestimate them and you will get the holy living crap kicked out of you in 2008. These people are organizing far beyond blogs and blog readers. And that organization extends almost down to the precinct level as I’m sure next year’s Netroots Convention will show (they’ve decided to rename the shindig in order to move it away from one guy’s blog).
They are determined, well funded, optimistic, committed, and excited. The GOP is uncertain, underfunded, hopeful but pessimistic, dispirited, and seemingly leaderless, rudderless, and without an agenda.
Who do you think is in better shape going into next year’s contest?
There is an enormous amount of money backing the left at the moment, but they also have an incredibly rigid, top-down discipline – in other words, exactly what they claim the right has but frankly does not.
Blogosphere | Gaius August 6, 2007
