Planting Liberally

This is a quick "I told you so" hit. The NYT reports today that Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily blog is having a huge impact on the WGA strike. This reminds me of a post I wrote back in April, arguing that progressives should create a network of industry blogs in order to sway "public opinion" within a given industry. At the time, I wrote that such blogs could help sway industry insiders on internal debates which have political overtones, like the open source vs. proprietary debate within the computer software industry. I also wrote about the need to start progressive workplace blogs, and even suggested that unions could start a fleet of such blogs as a way to identify workplaces where they might find a lot of support. (I since incorporated that idea into a series on using the internet to strengthen labor unions.)

Well, the upshot is that these posts turned out to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Industry insiders and workers are already creating industry and workplace blogs, and those blogs are already having an impact on labor disputes and internal industry debates. Welcome to 2003. Now, it's time for the progressive movement and labor movement to wise up to these online developments and begin harnessing them for progressive cultural change within the workforce.

Incidentally, unrelated to all of the above, I've recently started using Google Docs to write my blog posts. The resulting HTML is a bit clunky when I copy into MyDD, and I can't figure out how to tag my posts, but otherwise, I'm loving it. Thanks to my former DL co-host Baratunde Thurston (who himself swiped it from Todd Plants, who in an odd twist was a college roommate of mine) for the idea.

Update: And just like that, Devilstower at DailyKos starts blogging about the alternative auto industry. Gosh I love the blogosphere.