Readers can browse a wide array of blogs, gather information and react to what is being written. In a blogosphere with nearly endless possibilities, readers are picky about what they choose to digest and only the best survive.

“I’ve always described blogs as the ultimate meritocracy because if you suck, you suck. Nobody reads you – there’s plenty of other blogs out there,” says Owen Robinson, blogger for “Boots and Sabers.” “If you’re great, people read you, people will come back, people comment.”

With the power to reach large, targeted audiences, bloggers are becoming increasingly influential on the political culture in Wisconsin. By banding ordinary citizens together, blogs can affect the government both directly and indirectly.

“The thing with blogs is that it’s an expression of individuals,” Robinson says. “This isn’t just me sitting there voicing my opinions on the news of the day. But if I’m voicing that opinion, and there’s 200 other bloggers voicing the same opinion and 10,000 people reading those blogs that are commenting saying ‘yeah, that’s true,’ that’s what politicians notice. Politicians care about votes. If they think there’s an issue that will sway votes, they will react.”

According to Robinson, many readers go to blogs in search of specific opinions – those that closely match their own. While readers actively participate in reading and commenting on blogs, they are not necessarily swayed by what the blogger has to say.

“I think it’s fun for them to go to blogs or go to other opinion journalism, and all they’re really seeing is a reflection of themselves. They’re seeing their own opinion in print and seeing it justified or explained,” Robinson says.

Bloggers can also influence government in more direct ways. As an addendum to his blog, Robinson participated in the most noticeable influence of a blogger on the Legislature to date. During the 2007 budget cycle, Robinson asked state Assembly Republicans to sign a pledge vowing not to increase taxes.

“There were people who were really, really hesitant to sign my pledge because they knew that as a staunch fiscal conservative, I wasn’t going to cut them any slack and my [political] leaders certainly weren’t,” Robinson says.

Eventually 10 Assembly Republicans and one Assembly Democrat signed on. In doing so, those legislators went into budget negotiations vowing they would not vote for a budget that included tax increases. As a result, Assembly leaders did not have the votes needed to pass their version of the budget.

“[The budget] was delayed and delayed and delayed because you have this rock solid core of Assembly Republicans who had signed my pledge who refused to have the tax increase,” Robinson says.

“And at the end of the day, we passed a budget. There were some tax increases in it; the 11 people who signed my pledge all voted against it, and it went through. But I think it would have been a much, much worse budget had not those people held firm.”

As new forms of media are on the rise, the relationship between traditional media (television, newspapers and radio) and alternative media (online media) maintains an intricate balance of camaraderie, competition and codependence. As a traditional media person by day (a columnist for the West Bend Daily News) and an alternative media person by night (blogger for “Boots and Sabers”), Robinson identifies the relationship between the two as symbiotic.

“We bloggers, we have jobs, we have different specialties, we have different things that we do,” Robinson says. “We see things, we notice things, and there are far more of us who can be in a lot of different places where the mainstream media can’t.”

Bloggers, however, still rely on traditional reporters to research, dig up stories and report on them.

“I think [blogs] are a good supplement to the information that’s out there, and I think they can be valuable, but I don’t think they’re necessarily the future,” Schneider says. “I think there’s always going to be some kind of establishment media that gets information out to everybody.”

A unique part about blogging in Wisconsin, or anywhere else, is that anyone with ideas and their own perspective can do it. Some of the best bloggers may come from unlikely places.

“One of my favorite blogs is a truck driver, but he has great insight,” Robinson says. “It’s a reaffirming medium that we Americans are a pretty sharp bunch and even the clerk at McDonald’s may have some great ideas; he may have some great insight on the world. He just needs the opportunity to share it.”

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