Blogs increasing in political importance

Over the past couple of days, we've seen a couple of stories that suggest people are picking up on the political importance of blogs.

Rob Christensen, political columnist for The (Raleigh) News and Observer highlighted the growing importance of "netroots" in a Sunday piece. He focused on two well-known Democratic blog-kings (Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos fame and Jerome Armstrong of Howard Dean's campaign):

Their view is that the Democratic Party has become too reliant on corporate contributions, too self-satisfied and too dependent on a few tired Beltway strategists.

Their underlying thesis is that the country needs "an authentic and populist democratic movement to crash the gate and save our nation."

Meanwhile today, a national story from the Associated Press that made front pages of some Southern newspapers noted there will be a big increase in Net politics in the coming political season:

Strategists in both parties say the drive to use new media is simple: It's cheap and easy, and more and more people are connected.

According to a survey after the last presidential election, reliance on the Internet for political news during the 2004 contest grew sixfold when compared with 1996.

At the same time, the Pew Research Center poll showed that 40 percent of Internet users found the Web important in helping them decide for whom to vote.