Bloggers to Join Press Corps at Conventions

As if there won't be enough press there already, bloggers -- writers who post their stories directly to Web sites -- will be admitted as credentialed reporters to both the Republican and Democratic conventions this July and August. ''It's like we've finally been invited to sit at the grown-ups table at Thanksgiving,'' Ana Marie Cox, Blogger of wonkette.com, stated in this USA Today report. On the other hand, Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, questions the blogger's journalistic credentials. ''They're certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo,'' McPhail says. Bloggers ''should be put in a different category, like 'pretend' journalists.'' (Also See: The Conventions Day-by-Day and When Conventions Were Fun)