More on the Campus Progress Blog

Over at Campus Progress, Ben Adler takes issue with what I wrote yesterday about the Campus Progress blog. I'm well aware that some of the paid staff at Campus Progress are also contributors at Tapped, and that folks like himself are engaged in the blogosphere. However, I also read the Campus Progress RSS feed and my comments were directed toward the user-generated content coming in over that feed. Ezra Klein may write about health care on the Campus Progress magazine, but I don't see Campus Progress members/users then blogging about health care and quoting what Ezra said about the latest proposal, (let alone what it means, and how to take action on the issue). I don't see Campus Progress users quoting those other cultural and policy blogs that Adler claims close association to either. This is what I was getting at. The users do not seem to be engaged in a conversation with those blogs. Maybe that is a too narrow definition of engaging the blogs. If so, I'm more than happy to have a discussion about that.

It's worth noting that Adler is picking a nit. He doesn't address the central thesis of my post - about youth participation in online activism via SocNets vs. blogs - and doesn't dispute the main point I am making when I mention Campus Progress: that blogs run by youth organizations, and the conversation about how to use the blogosphere to serve activist goals, could be dramatically improved to the benefit of progressive youth movement.

Contrary to what Adler writes, I do not think that means that youth organizations and their blogs all need to be "mini-Kos." I'm well aware of the restrictions placed on an organization like Campus Progress as a 501c3, and I don't think a series of Kos Jr. websites would be all that valuable anyway. As I mentioned very briefly in my piece, and plan to elaborate on next weekend, I would much rather see these organizations use blogs to report on their own activities and the activities of other progressive youth organizations. I would like to see them become a way to educate young progressives about the broader progressive youth movement. I'd like to see them become a place to share success stories and failures; to spread best practices and warn others of failed tactics. That is well within the mission of Campus Progress and I think would be a valuable goal for a healthy progressive youth blogging community. In that, at least, we don't seem to be in disagreement.