Periodically, Ye Olde Bond-Papers gets an e-mail from one of the Premier's staunchest of staunch supporters. They are always enjoyable, if not mysterious, since they tend to follow a predictable pattern that ends up constantly begging the same question.
At the point where said correspondent notes the overwhelming - dare one say "avalanche of" - popularity of the province's premier mobile phoner, it seems amazing that there are any e-mails coming at all. Surely, if the guy addicted to his Roger's cell that popular, what poor old e-scribblers scribble would hardly matter. Would it?
Anyway...
In the land to the East, in the Mother of Parliaments, a mother of another kind who blogs under the name Guy Fawkes recently uncovered a campaign spending controversy. That's part of a much larger series of posts on one labour member - Peter Hain - whom Guy now claims as his first head, as in head on a pole.
You'll find some interesting discussion of the Hain series at Iain Dale's online diary, and Roy Greenslade's space at the Guardian Online.
As Iain notes, bloggers don't exist to get scalps however from time to time, we can influence the public conversation.
That's pretty much it.
Sometimes other people can influence the public conversation too, like say the fellow who went public with his story this week about Danny Williams and the cell phone. Despite the very best efforts at character assassination by the Premier's supporters and despite the efforts by a surprising number of reporters to kill or discredit the story and despite the fact that VOCM completely ignored a story they had first, the great cell phone debacle had national legs over several days.
And the story kept rolling despite a relatively quick effort by the thumbs on the 8th to get the admission of guilt into circulation. The story was still going on radio talk shows four news cycles after it first broke on a VOCM talk show and VOCM news took an editorial decision to ignore it officially.
Wow.
That's impact.
Makes you wonder what some people would do if local blogs really did dig for stories like Guido does.
Exploding heads, maybe?
Soiled undies, per chance?
Anyway, if you feel so inclined, Guy's come some half-decent swag, via Cafe Press.
-srbp-