The Founding Bloggers? Or an Internet tea party? Take your pick. This morning news broke that a group of "politically diverse group of bloggers" were so impressed with last week's question and answer session between President Obama and the house Republicans that they have banded together to call on the president and the Congress to make it a regular thing. Sort of takes the term 'Internet Presidency' to a whole new level. (more...)

I started out this year wondering if the white-hot intensity of the 2008 campaign could be even partially sustained, a daunting question for a $10-a-post blogger trying to hustle his way into a career in journalism. I'm ending it as a White House reporter and political correspondent for two national online publications, well on my way to going from Pinocchio to real boy. Along the way, I learned some lessons and saw some things that I'd like to share with you. This isn't a roundup of the (Best/Worst/Most) of 2009, but rather a peek behind the curtain.

My story starts in the middle of the year. It was mid-June, and I had just gone through a well-publicized breakup with Politics Daily. I was sitting in the front row of the White House press briefing room, tapping away on my laptop before the briefing, when Lynn Sweet approached me.

Lynn had been my stablemate at Politics Daily, and we had only met for the first time a few weeks earlier. During that initial meeting, she talked to me for almost an hour, dispensing frequent "razz the new guy" barbs and journalistic lessons learned. I considered it a profound honor to have my chops busted by a legend like Lynn Sweet, whose work I had enjoyed so much during the campaign. If someone has to tell you "Go cover City Hall, kid," you could do a lot worse.

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The age of Twitter has spawned new rituals, among them the watchdogging of reactions to the deaths or illnesses of polarizing figures. Rush Limbaugh's chest-pains scare from last night was no exception. Almost immediately, conservatives began to catalog the good, the bad, and the ugly in online reaction to Rush's peril, and some others were eager to hang the ugliness on the collective left. We've got a sampling of each for you, including some very good behavior by the left's most visible media figure. (more...)

Earlier this week the NYT's David Carr wrote a glowing account of AOL's transformation from "gated community" to a growing content (and traffic) juggernaut. Emphasis on the "growing" — Mediaite just learned that AOL's Daily Finance blog has signed on former Portfolio.com staffer Sam Gustin, who will be joining the Daily Finance team as a contributor on Monday. This brings its writers to an impressive 20 — and its ex-Portfolio staffers to three. (more...)

In his column in today's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz painted Politics Daily as a fantastic wonderland of six-figure salaries, 5000-word articles, foreign correspondents who actually go overseas, and a distaste for the "hyperpartisan." All of which sounds great, but could it ever turn a profit in an environment where traffic for articles like "Strippers Compete in Palin Look-alike Contest" is likely to dwarf Afghanistan coverage for the foreseeable future? If not, what is AOL trying to pull? (more...)

In a fascinating Washington Post column yesterday, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington described how AOL is scooping up some of the best print reporters from short-sighted print publications:

arlier today I got a glimpse at what AOL is up to - they are hiring all the journalists being fired and laid off by the newspapers and magazines. And they now have a news room 1,500 journalists and editors strong. Amazingly, failing old media is throwing away their most valuable assets. And AOL is eagerly picking those assets up for a song. Before anyone knows it, AOL may be the most powerful news outlet in the world.

But if consultant-happy print publications are shooting themselves in the feet, the arrangement is mutually beneficial for journalists and for AOL, whose CEO, Tim Armstrong, announced earlier this year that the company plans to shift its focus to "the content business." (more...)

EXCLUSIVE Yesterday we wondered about Robert Gibbs' statement that Twitter was blocked on White House computers: If it was, then how did the White House Twitter feed get updated? We did some web-sleuthing and discovered that not only were Tweets off the official White House Twitter feed posted during business hours, they were almost exclusively posted posted “from web” – i.e. during business hours accessed from a computer – or “from HootSuite” – a web-based Twitter app that manages multiple Twitter accounts with multiple editors, also from a computer. This was a mystery! (more...)