Seeking local correspondents

The always excellent Archpundit wrote the following recently:

When journalists decide to do a piece on local politics they inevitably miss the nuances of the race.

That is the whole point behind the Political State Report, a new blog I've been hyping for some time, and will finally launch next Monday.

The concept is simple: to have ground-level correspondents covering political events in their neck of the woods. As such, I'm looking for politically astute individuals that can provide the occassional report on political ongoings in their states.

I am looking for writers from across the political spectrum -- people who can steer clear of empty rhetoric and focus on the "Inside Baseball" aspect of politics. Ideological diversity is meant to provide diverse interpretations of certain events, not to spur pissing matches between ideological foes. This site is intended to be cerebral, not emotional.

I already have a list of volunteers I will start wading through this week, but I still have a long way to go before I can fill out the roster. I want at least two writers per state, one from the left, and one from the right. Some states will have more contributors, others may have none. Some states will require lots of content (Iowa should be lively heading into 2004), others, like Wyoming, should be relatively quiet.

Contributors should have a strong feel for the political personalities in their states, and be intelligently able to speculate on their intentions. And they should be able to make confident and supported election predictions.

If you are interested in participating, please email me at kos@dailykos.com. For my conservative friends who also run websites (like Tacitus and John Cole), I would appreciate it if you would plug this offer on your sites. Remember -- I am looking for the "inside baseball"-type political junkies, not ideologues.

This will be an epic experiment, especially considering the efforts to encourage ideological diversity. But if it works, the new blog should become THE place for political junkies.

Posted December 02, 2002 02:03 PM | Comments (23)