A few months ago, I wrote a piece for the State Policy Network Magazine that discussed the symbiotic relationship between bloggers and think tanks. Here it is:
Bloggers and Think Tanks: A Dream Team
By Christian Schneider
Published on Tuesday, April 01, 2008
ARTICLESImagine the nation\’s best college football coach, standing at his chalkboard, diagramming plays. He has spent hours staring, bleary-eyed, at videotapes of his next opponent. He has missed meals with his family in order to spend obscene amounts of time diagramming plays that will secure victory in this week\’s game.
Then, imagine that coach has no team.
With all the work he puts in researching his next opponent, a coach needs his players to carry out the game plan. Otherwise, regardless of how brilliant his research is, he\’s talking to an empty room.
Across America, free market think tanks are starting to figure out how to put together \”teams\” to implement their game plans. These teams are made up primarily of the \”citizen media,\” i.e., bloggers. When free-market think tanks begin to involve bloggers in their dissemination of ideas, it provides the institutes with a large, influential web of voices that can highlight issues that may not receive coverage in the mainstream media.
August 5, 2008 at 1:06 pm
And the best part, those bloggers work for peanuts or less!