When not working for an Internet development company, William Beutler writes a conservative leaning blog, called "Blog P.I."

"Yesterday I got 193 visitors," he said. "That is not quite accurate. I got 193 page loads. That means the page itself was loaded 193 times. It could have been one person reloading it 193 times."

"Our research team has two major functions," says Faiz Shakir, who works full-time blogging for the Center For American Progress, a research institute for liberal causes. "One is to produce an e-newsletter every morning called "Progress Report" which goes out to 80,000 people and then the blog "ThinkProgress" which receives approximately 200,000 visitors a day and is one of the top three political blogs in the world."

Political blogging or the online publishing of commentary is now part of the political landscape in America. Bloggers use Internet sites to help raise funds for candidates, promote causes and get out the vote. Bloggers can gain prominence - and audience - by being quoted in traditional media like The New York Times or being linked to an already popular blog like the Daily Kos. But Matthew Nisbet with American University's School of Communication says political blogs tend to be polarizing.

"The audience is ever more fragmented and there is really, there is increasingly less of a space where people from both the left and the right are engaging and consuming in the same news content and are actually trading ideas in arguments with each other," he says.

During the U.S. presidential campaign, liberal and progressive sites have been more active and popular. Many of them began in opposition to the Iraq war. Shakir says the Democratic party is more comfortable with open discourse.

"Over time what you've seen is that progressives have dominated the space because they are more comfortable with expressing their views regardless of what the party thinks of it," Shakir says.

Buetler concedes he and fellow conservative bloggers have been less effective. He says they have grown disenchanted with the failures of the Bush administration, from the cost and conduct of the Iraq war to the proposed government bailout of financial markets.

"It is more difficult to create a movement when your party is already in power and you don't like what your party is doing," he says. "In a way, the best thing for online conservative activists might be Barack Obama as president. When you hold power for long enough, eventually you start to go stale."

Both parties are paying close attention to political bloggers. In a close election, they could be the key to victory.

"This year's winners show us how creative minds are using new technologies to connect people to hidden truths and hard-to-find information," said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, which administers the awards. According to the judges, "Others have attempted similar projects, but PolitiFact stands out for making detailed research easy to get."

"It is exciting to see PolitiFact receive accolades from such an esteemed organization," said Neil Brown, executive editor and vice president of the St. Petersburg Times. "We are deeply honored to win this award and it is gratifying that our bold 'gimme the truth' approach to the presidential campaign has really taken off."

PolitiFact (www.politifact.com) is a Web site that helps voters separate fact from fiction in the claims made during the 2008 presidential campaign. Times Washington bureau chief Bill Adair, who originally conceived the site, works with Times government and politics editor Scott Montgomery and in tandem with more than a dozen members of the award-winning staffs of CQ and the Times to produce the database-driven site. Together, the PolitiFact team checks the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other candidate claims and communications.

"The presidential campaign has reached a fever pitch with statements and accusations flying between the two camps," said Mike Riley, senior vice president and editor of CQ Publications. "Now more than ever, the American public needs a source to help them sort through the rhetoric and get the truth. That source is PolitiFact."

The Knight-Batten Awards honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news. They are administered by J-Lab, a center of American University's School of Communication.

The winners were selected by an Advisory Board that includes the Knight Foundation's Gary Kebbel and Jose Zamora; Jody Brannon, national director of the Carnegie-Knight News 21 initiative; Jim Brady, executive editor, washingtonpost.com; Bill Buzenberg, executive director, Center for Public Integrity; Nick Charles, vice president for digital content, BET Interactive; Lee Rainie, executive director, Pew Internet & American Life Project; Chuck Lewis, founder, Investigative Journalism Workshop, AU's School of Communication; Wendell Cochran, professor, AU's School of Communication; Chris Harvey, Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland; and Jan Schaffer, J-Lab director.

About the Publishers

Times Publishing Company is the publisher of The St. Petersburg Times, Florida's largest newspaper with circulation of 316,007 daily and 432,779 Sunday (ABC Publisher's Statement 3/31/08). Considered one of the top ten newspapers in the country with six Pulitzer Prizes to its name, the Times is one of the nation's largest independents.

With more than 130 reporters, editors and researchers covering Capitol Hill and Washington, Congressional Quarterly keeps its readers updated in print and online on a weekly, daily and real-time basis. CQ's readership includes nearly every member of Congress as well as Executive Branch officials, leaders in business and associations, top academic institutions and important media outlets. Visit www.cq.com or www.cqpolitics.com.

Both the Times and CQ are affiliates of the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism education.

About the Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

About J-Lab

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network (www.kcnn.org and http://www.J-Learning.org), the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org) and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative (www.newmediawomen.org).

SOURCE Congressional Quarterly

http://www.cq.com