MD GOP Cracks Down On Bloggers

Michael Dresser of The Baltimore Sun (who is greatly missed from his days as a transit/transportation writer for them before he went to the government beat) writes about new rules from the Maryland Republican Party related to media credentials (which I’ve excerpted at the bottom of this post.)

There are several questionable things in there, but the thing that stood out to me, besides Dresser’s headline, was the credentialing rules as they relate to bloggers.

Basically, the rules show laziness by letting other credentialing bodies do all the work. Additionally, there seems to be an attempt to shut out bloggers.

This is still 2013 right? I recently attended CPAC 2013 as a blogger and I was seated in the same media area as all of the traditional media and had a pass that said Media. Values Voter Summit has had bloggers in with traditional media for years also. In addition to that, many of the Republican primary events and other election events had bloggers and media using the same credential and being in the same area.

Some of the best coverage of the MD GOP’s foibles recently have been from bloggers like Jackie Wellfonder, Joe Steffen,Richard Cross, Red Maryland, Jim Jamitis, and others. I even blogged about one of their screwups. This would appear to be a pathetic attempt to reign in those bloggers. It won’t work and the current MD GOP leadership now has egg on their faces.

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