As a coordinator of the Open House Project, I’m responsible for a major component: getting YOU access to Congress.
As a former Capitol Hill reporter for Human Events and Cybercast News Service before that, I’m quite familiar with the credentialing process for journalists. I also know about the difficulties facing online journalists and bloggers. Liberal blogger/journalist David Sirota is the most recent to run into trouble trying to secure credentials, but it’s certainly not a struggle facing only the left. The popular conservative website WorldNetDaily spent years fighting the Senate Press Gallery.
Congressional media galleries are powerful institutions that control not just press access on Capitol Hill, but also credentialing for the Democrat and Republican conventions. It’s our goal to offer recommendations to make the process open to citizen journalists and bloggers. But in order to do that, we need your feedback.
I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the existing structure. The House has media galleries for Daily Press, Periodical Press and Radio-TV Correspondents. The Senate, meanwhile, caters to Daily Press, Press Photographers’, Periodical Press and Radio-TV.
Notice anything missing from this list? How about an Online Media Gallery? Right now there is nothing that remotely addresses the growing significance of citizen journalists or bloggers. Do you think there should be? Please leave a comment or, if you’d like, get involved.
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