WMUR-TV, Gather.com to hold blogging competition

Cory Bergman May 9th, 2007

Coming in June, WMUR-TV will host two presidential debates, and the station is teaming with Gather.com to hold a blogging competition to decide which bloggers will participate. To enter, New Hampshire bloggers will submit posts that will be judged by bloggers across the country. The winners — 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 5 Independents — will have a spot in the “spin room” as well as have the opportunity to submit questions to the debate. “Much as the candidates have used the web to talk to voters, so too are we using citizen journalism to give voters a chance to tell candidates what they think,” said WMUR-TV President and General Manager Jeffrey Bartlett. Screen grab…

WMUR-TV is thinking ahead on this one, as I imagine they’re getting inundated with requests from bloggers to attend the debates — most of whom don’t live in New Hampshire. This contest is a smart way to narrow the list down to 15 local bloggers who “represent” the national blogging community at large. But inevitably, I bet some of the top political blogs — who feel they’ve earned a seat by nature of their large audiences — are going to get a little testy. Press release…

PRESS RELEASE — WMUR-TV, the Hearst-Argyle Television station in Manchester, NH, which has been cited in National Journal as “The most important local TV station in Politics,” has partnered with popular blogging community Gather.com to empower American voters in the forthcoming Presidential debates.

Throughout May, WMUR will sponsor an open writing competition hosted by Gather.com and judged by the blogging community at large. The competition will yield 15 citizen journalists from New Hampshire (five each of Republicans, Democrats and Independents) who will cover the June 3rd Democratic and June 5th Republican debates, which will also be simulcast on WMUR, CNN, and their respective websites.

Entitled “Your Voice, Your Vote, Your Next President”, the competition, part of WMUR’s and Hearst-Argyle’s Commitment 2008 election-coverage effort, can be accessed at www.wmur.com by entering the Politics section, which will take visitors to the special site wmur.gather.com.

“The Web has become a key battleground for political debate,” said WMUR-TV President and General Manager Jeffrey Bartlett. “Much as the candidates have used the Web to talk to voters, so too are we using citizen journalism to give voters a chance to tell candidates what they think. By joining forces with a leading social-networking provider like Gather, we are able to make the June debates an unprecedented, dynamic and intensive engagement among viewers, voters and candidates.”

“This campaign will allow our viewers to participate directly in the debates. Not only will they respond before, during and immediately following the debates,” added WMUR News Director Andrew Vrees, “but a few will be represented at the events as well.”

Running from May 8th to May 27th, the groundbreaking competition is special to Gather.com, a site widely known for attracting major political figures such as former Senator John Edwards, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Governor Mike Huckabee and former Senator Bill Bradley, who serves on the Gather Inc. board. All viewers in New Hampshire are invited to enter the competition by logging on to WMUR.Gather.com and creating a free account; rules and frequently-asked questions will also be available on that page. “The famous phrase ‘All politics is local’ is embodied in this effort; although the presidential campaign is a national process, in New Hampshire it’s a truly local phenomenon,” Vrees added.

“We’re reaching out with our partners at WMUR to amplify the voices heard here on Gather in the Presidential primary process,” added Tom Gerace, founder and CEO of Gather Inc. “The engaged, informed voices that are heard on Gather.com every day ask the questions many Americans are asking as we head into 2008. We debate the economy, the environment, war, security, education, health, and energy.”

Entries in the online writing competition to cover the debates will consist of the bloggers’ commentary and analysis on the primary campaign to date (approximately 500 words). Each posting is considered a separate entry. Submitting additional entries increases a bloggers’ chances of attaining the highest readership and the highest ratings from other members of the community. Entrants must be residents of New Hampshire, though the reading, rating, and posting of blogs is open to anyone. More details on the competition rules are at http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976977388.

At the end of the competition, members of this online community will vote to choose the bloggers who will “represent” them at the June debates. Fifteen bloggers will be selected (5 Republican, 5 Democrats and 5 Independents). On the night of each debate, the 15 representative bloggers will be in the “spin room” at the debate site and will post commentary before, during, and after the event. Their questions also may be posed directly to candidates during the debate.

The Democratic and Republican debates will be held at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on June 3rd and June 5th, respectively, from 7 PM to 9 PM (ET), and are being produced by WMUR-TV and partners The New Hampshire Union Leader and CNN. WMUR political director Scott Spradling and Union Leader political columnist John DiStaso will lead the panel of those posing questions to candidates, and WMUR anchor Jennifer Vaughn will moderate audience questions. The debate moderator will be CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, anchor of the daily political newscast The Situation Room and the Sunday public affairs program Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.

Commitment 2008 is a project at WMUR and Hearst Argyle’s 26 other news-carrying TV stations, and their respective local websites, to provide comprehensive local TV news coverage of national, state and local election campaigns. WMUR and other Hearst-Argyle stations provide a minimum 10 minutes’ daily coverage of candidate discourse in the 30 days leading up to Primaries and the general election. With WMUR’s significant political coverage contributions in New Hampshire and Hearst Argyle’s Commitment 2000, Commitment 2002, Commitment 2004 and Commitment 2006 programs, the Company has earned the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award four consecutive times, the only recipient ever to do so.
Hearst-Argyle majority owner Hearst Corporation is an investor in Gather Inc.
About Gather, Inc.

Gather.com (www.gather.com) is the leader in social media for adults. Gather.com members connect around shared interests ranging from politics to books and from cooking to travel, and they’re compensated for their activity on the site. Members can engage in conversation with state and local politicians, health and financial experts, personal coaches, bestselling authors, and more. Over one million people visit Gather.com each month to read content created by Gather.com members. Gather.com has a highly educated, highly informed adult audience membership — a demographic elusive to most social networking sites. This demographic has made Gather.com an exceptional partner to media companies, advertising agencies, leading consumer brands, book publishers, and movie studios. Gather.com is a privately held, privately funded company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Investors include Allen & Company, The American Public Media Group, Hearst, The McGraw-Hill Companies, and Southern California Public Radio. For more information, visit www.gather.com or call (617) 720 4000, x1032.