Blogger Is Surprised by Uproar Over Obama Story, but Not Bitter

The back story of how Senator Barack Obama’s comments about small-town voters became news is getting almost as much attention in the blogosphere as the comments themselves. Mayhill Fowler, a blogger for OffTheBus.net, a Web site published by Huffington Post and created by Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen, was the first to report Mr. Obama’s comments — that small-town voters bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations. Fowler said she was initially reluctant to write about what Mr. Obama had said because she actually supports him -- which partly explains why she was at the fund-raiser in the first place and why there was a four-day delay between the event and the publication of her post. Ultimately, she said, she decided that if she didn’t write about it, she wouldn’t be worth her salt as a journalist. The whole episode gives a revealing glimpse into yet even more ways in which the Internet is changing the coverage of politics. And Ms. Fowler says she is surprised that she is playing a role in this revolution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/us/politics/14web-seelye.html
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