A Red State In The Town Hall
The summer of '06 may known in the conservative blogosphere as the Great Sorting Out.
On Independence Day, Townhall.com relaunches.
One consultant working for them writes in an e-mail that the new Townhall will be "an entirely different type of site that gives bloggers a radio voice and is completely geared at turning listeners and Internet junkies into activists, much like a campaign. In fact, they are focusing a lot of activity at the elections and the presidential primaries. They even hired the Bush-Cheney ’04 Internet campaign director to create, launch and run the site."
As we first reported in, that man is Chuck DeFeo.
And Redstate is on the verge of a renaissance, too. Erick Woods-Erickson, a young Georgia lawyer, wrote friends this week that he'll be the new CEO of RedState, Inc., and the managing editor of the Redstate.com website.
Wrote Erickson "We've got a few months worth of revenue in the bank and I'm hoping that through a lot of hard work and effort we'll be able to grow the brand and make it an effective conservative weapon in the blogosphere for the 2006 elections and then 2008."
The major Dem blogosphere sites -- MyDD, Kos, Atrios -- managed to find particular, personality-anchored niches.
Townhall and Redstate are more communal, at least at the top.
Townhall is clearly the more corporate of the two and has a stable of well-known conservative personalities to attract eyeballs. But Redstate remains the site of choice (we think) for Congressional staffs.
If you like your internet politics red, it's an exciting time.