I was reminded the other day about how one reason the press were totally freaked out by Howard Dean's presidential campaign was that it had a blog...and the bloggers just posted anything they wanted! Without being vetted!!! By, uh, whomever was supposed to do the vetting!
It took awhile for me to understand this. Campaigns hire communications staff who... communicate. They don't run everything by the candidate or the campaign chief of staff or whatever. Maybe the bloggers were "young" but Washington and election campaigns are filled with young people. So what was the issue?
Bypassing the middleman - the press.
