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10:20 AM: After a few bouts with the wireless her at Marquette Law School we are online. We are into the first discussion on the effects of blogs on the 06 and 08 Campaigns. Brian Fraley is making a stand for a significant effect. OpEd boards are no longer important, they are already written off. I don’t know if that is spot on on but it is moving in that directions. I still am stunned at Ed Garvey and some of the lefties insisting the mainstream media is part of the vast right wing conspiracy. Seriously. …

10:22 AM: DRS: Well good morning, bright and early on Saturday morning. Rather than studying for the law school exams next week, I’m sitting here next to Brandon at a blog summit. And for the record, everyone in the room is showered, shaved, and not wearing their pajamas.

Looking around the room, lots of familiar faces. In addition to all the bloggers in the room, Dean/Professor Rofes of the Law School is here, and one pol: John Gard and his lovely wife Cate are here, cultivating relationships with the blogs; they are here for Alumni Awards Weekend receiving the Friends of the School of Dentistry Award.

Interesting panel … John Kraus is giving Charlie credit for shaping how the Journal Sentinel approaches the news; he really does serve as a conduit for Walker, Clarke, and others to email him a statement and from there it goes to MJS.

10:28 AM Brandon: Ed Garvey is raving about the “right wing blather” on the radio as part of a debate surrounding the MSM following blogs and posting on it. Gop3.com has documented a number of posts that worked their way right into the Marquette Tribune or the mainstream media. Daniel Suhr’s post on Clifford’s consideration of school choice brought that discussion up and arguably effected the election.

Ed Garvey lefty tinfoil hat: Everything is caused by the right wing media and right wing government conspiracy. “They’re going to start charging us for every email becuase they want to stop us”. Back to you Dan.

10:35 AM: The one problem with blogger summits is that everyone wants to ask a question so all the livebloggers can say, “So and So from Such and Such (LINK) just asked this interesting question….” And, because we bloviate virtually professionally, they make statements, not questions, often.

Charlie is working on a Rule of Five theory - that you can only read about five blogs a day. Fraley said he reads about a dozen. Brandon and I turned to one another and said, “Don’t you read about 20 a day?” And I was like, aahhh… At Least!

Kraus is talking about when blogs lead the way on a story, like the US Attorneys and TPM. Certainly that’s the case - as much as we often provide commentary, we often break news as well… Kraus also points out that blogs have a great ability to organize and energize (think no 2 gold).

10:43 AM Brandon: Left wing blogger: “The blogosphere is not fair the right wing blogs have the right wing radio.” Give me a break! This is a lefty attitude through and through. “We don’t have a vehicle” Why don’t you have a vehicle? Because Air America dive bombed. The left can’t to do talk.

Ed Garvey’s Tinfoil hat is back! : “The right wing blogosphere is bought and paid for bought the rich Republicans”

As, Charlie said, the Blogosphere is the ultimate meritocracy. If you can’t keep up, don’t whine, change your method. This is America you are free to do what you wish. Charlie “You have Air America and PBS” Amen!

10:44 … DRS … Kraus says that bloggers need to mobilize. One thing that liberal blogs do well is get activist. Look at how they raise money for their candidates - they even have their PACs now… Right wing bloggers, as a crew, and I know this may cause comments, but these aren’t a lot of faces I see at phone banks or fundraisers. As much as we may be an echo chamber, it’s really more of an echo chamber criticizing liberals, than being supportive of our Republican candidates (and not all conservative bloggers would even admit to the label Republican). I don’t mind a little back and forth on a primary fight, but as a whole… Just saying for the record, liberal bloggeres and the people who read them tend to be more activist than conservative-leaning bloggers.

Ed Garvey: We Lost the War ! (FIST PUMP)

10:50AM DRS… Good morning, Jeff Mayers. Thanks for a great blog summit. And welcome to Marquette University Law School, the heart of public policy discussion in Southeastern Wisconsin.

What’s with this corporate/citizen/campaign/mother’s basement breakup of the blogosphere? Don’t all blogs generally rebel against being labeled (except this one, the GOP in GOP3 kinda gives us away)? Don’t we hate how the MSM and academia try to clump and catergorize us? Does the fact that Charlie is corporate make his blogging somehow significantly different than we or others?

Shout out from Jessica McBride to the one and only Professor John McAdams, for demolishing a pair of Journal Sentinel stories.

10:54 AM Brandon: Wow, we made it 54 mins in till the first Web 2.0 mention I do agree though that some of the blogs that do not allow comments are not Web 2.0, there is no interaction. OnMilwaukee.com gets 1 million hits a month, awesome! I have definitely subscribed to the RSS feed. This is awesome, Andy Tarnoff is getting into the nitty gritty throwing around XML and wikification. Good stuff. He mentioned getting into the search engines, this is huge. Most of the blogs in the room really need some search engine optimization. We have been working on it for a long time.

Jessica McBride is talking about the different types of blogs, breaking news, tome, etc. We are definitely a tome, content blog rather than just summaries of breaking news. It’s the Gop3.com special sauce. We do like to break stories but we work to break opinion as well, presenting what we believe with sources not often seen or read.

We are talking about hits and influential readers. I have to admit it’s great to see the readership we get from the government functions at the local, state, and national levels.

Andy Tanroff: People have more fun/hits reading the comments, which is definitely huge. Our readers definitely enjoy the commenting as well, look at the fray over on Katie’s monologues post.

11:05AM … DRS … And there’s the man - Dean Joseph D. Kearney of the Law School, looking dapper in a MU blue and gold tie. He’s gotta be happy as the law school shows up on blogs from all across the state. QUESTIONS people, not comments, QUESTIONS! Do you have a moral obligations as a blogger to allow comments? Hmmm….

Milw. journal sentinel admits that the blogging software is poorly designed - elicits clapping from the audience. Journal Communications uses the basically same software as Jessica on 620. … how do you define a blog? maybe its undefinable.

11:09 AM Brandon: Jessica - I don’t have time to police things, personally trash, libel etc. I understand her response but, I agree with what Andy is saying. People understand that comments are to be taken lightly. They use registered users. We use Akismet to filter our comments and it works very well. We get roughly 500 spam comments a day. Akismet has blocked 145,000 spam comments in the past year on gop3.com . It is a risk and it is work to moderate but, it is completely worth it. Jessica is again defending her position talking about suits and and litigous users, etc. Andy is defending the comments and I will definitely stand behind that.

11:15AM: New blog on JSOnline.com - Backroom Blog - with two state senators and two state representatives - Nedzie, Plale, Fields, and Vukmir. I’ve made it a daily read! It may be staff-driven, but hey, I like Capitol and campaign staff.

Are readers confused? Well, I think GOP3.com readers are smarter than most readers (clearly you have a cultivated taste for news - I am reminded of the direct mail solicitations from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus pitching FIRST THINGS), and when you’re confused, it’s when you disagree with me.

11:28AM: Since I’m the law student, I’ll take the first crack at the Legalities of Blogging talk from Jennifer Peterson of Godfrey and Kahn. She gave a talk last year that was pretty well received, so I’m sure this year will be fascinating as well. She notes that in the year from Blog Summit I to Blog Summit II today, we’ve had no Wisconsin bloggers sued or jailed, which raised applause. bloggers are always responsible for everything you say, the “first party content.” If you are the speaker of the information, you are responsible for what you write. the Communications Decency Act governs what third-parties say on your site, where you simply offer the forum.

11:30 AM Brandon: I just got back from a quick chat with Andy Tarnoff from OnMilwaukee.com specifically about this issue of commenting and wether we should be held liable for what others say. The legislation looks largely in favor the free market of ideas and holding individuals responsible for what they say and therefore, it is worth the risk involved to have comments.

“Congress has comprehensively immunized reposting of individuals” Good! An this from the rainbow state!

Universal Communications Systems Inc. v. Lycos, Inc. from the 1st Circuit says that a host does not create content on a message board, so protected under section 230… the next legal landscape is to determine how much editing makes it first-party content to the point that you’re liable for it.

There are tons of cases of bloggers being sued across the country. We see CDA Section 230 applied by appellate courts, but we’re also seeing jury verdicts for degamatory postings.

Anonymity … I once thought about going anonymous on the blog, pick the name of some ancient roman statesman, Federalist Papers style. But in the end I think if you’re going to criticize candidates and office holders, and administrators, you should do so on the record, with your name on it, because it forces you to be respectful, cordial, and conscious of your rhetoric.

When you get sued, liability is bad, and expensive, but just defending yourself is very expensive if you’re sued. So even if you’re not liable and you shouldn’t be liable, you still have to go hire an attorney to assert Section 230 or whatever. I wonder when the day will come that a campaign sues a weblog to get a post down like a campaign sues to get a TV ad taken down (think Van Hollen vs. Greater Wisconsin Committee) … I think I’ll ask that as a question.

11:44 AM Brandon: I hate how litigious our culture has become. I suppose it’s good for the future lawyer sitting next to me though

11:46AM Daniel: New Federal Election Commission rules are good for bloggers. Hoorah! The future is really open for blogs and email to get the message out for candidates and campaigns. … Our starting protection is the 1st Amendment, but beyond that, bloggers are pretty safe thanks to Section 230 … someone suggests EFF.org - the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as a good place to advocate for bloggers. But a good reminder - gotta stick to the truth, can’t go defamatory.

Well, it’s been a good morning, but we’re gonna call it. No need to get in a tiff with Eugene Kane. Thanks for coming by, feel the blogger love. DANIEL

In regards to the next session, I agree with the common refrian of the day, the Internet and the blogosphere is the ultimate free marketplace of ideas, I would rather not sit around and listen to conspiracy theories about prejudice on the internet. If your opinions and thoughts are interesting and insightful, they will succeed. Thank you for your readership, Brandon

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