As a pair of bloggers take their media seats in the highly visible Scooter Libby trial in a Washington federal courtroom, it has been learned that the Associated Press will carry the bloggers’ trial coverage.
Gaining access to media credentials for a closely watched sensational trial in the Nation’s Capital was a nice accomplishment for Robert Cox and the Media Bloggers Association. Even better, their bloggers taking part in the media coverage will have their message distributed beyond the blogosphere.
The Association announced today that AP will distribute Media Bloggers’ take on the proceedings through AP’s wire service. The news comes just as the opening arguments in the perjury trial against Libby begin.
Cox hailed the decision by AP to carry Media Bloggers’s coverage, and called it a “milestone in the emergence of grassroots-generated journalism.”:
“The AP’s decision to redistribute MBA-bloggers’ coverage of the Libby trial to its members websites means that bloggers’ coverage of the trial will be available to the readers of more than 600 newspapers’ websites nationwide and around the world,” said Cox.
“This is a great step forward in the relationship between news bloggers and the mainstream media.”
A dozen bloggers will rotate through the trial, and provide their accounts of what happens on their blogs and on the Media Bloggers’ website. Cox told Murdok previously that the first two bloggers to use their media credentials would be James Joyner from Outside The Beltway and Murray Waas from Crooks and Liars.
Contrary to what conventional wisdom might suggest, Cox also said in an email that there had been no overt expressions of ill will toward bloggers by the representatives of the mainstream media that he has seen. This is despite two bloggers gaining media credentials that would normally have landed in the hands of established media reporters.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
