The Boston Globe has had Massachusetts delegates blogging throughout the convention. The New York Times has interviews with delegates about what they hope to hear Obama address in tonight’s speech at Invesco Field. How useful have they been?
The Globe’s blog, called “Mass Voices,” has been interesting to read, because the delegates have been responding to the speeches as they happen, or writing about what struck them most during the previous night’s events. You have to parse through it a bit, because the quality of writing and insight varies. And it was a good idea to have Republican delegates contributing too (commenting this week on both the goings-on of the DNC and the Republican Platform Committee), in advance of the RNC. It’s just a bit confusing to have Blues and Reds both responding on the same blog, when you expect to hear from folks currently at the DNC.
The Times’s audio clips of DNC delegates offer a wide spread of opinions that individually, don’t resound so much. The “voices” interactive feature, after all, isn’t anything new. But if you let the media player run through them all, in totality it’s actually a pretty good backdrop of delegate perspectives and priorities from different states (not just New York) for readers looking forward to the nominee’s address tonight, and a refreshing break from, as Katia pointed out last night, some of the more useless moments of media talk.
Jane Kim is a writer in New York.