Recently I was invited to join the Planning Committee for an organization called BlogCall.org -- an organization founded by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com.

I accepted in a heartbeat as it was clearly a brilliant idea -- bringing together members of the Progressive blogosphere with members of the mainstream media via regularly scheduled conference calls -- and promoting those stories being overshadowed by biased, right-wing media influences such as Drudge, Limbaugh, Fox News, the Washington Times, and the New York Post.

The calls serve as both an organizing power for progressive blog investigations/exposes and a tool for relationship-building with members of the mainstream media.

Particularly impressive is the blistering speed at which Bob has transformed his vision into a functioning, effective, powerful tool to promote a populist media, not through unending whining and complaints, but rather through action and sheer force of mind and will.

And now the MSM has taken notice. On the cover of today’s New York Times Business Section is a feature article on the creation and functioning of BlogCall.org. Congratulations Bob!

Even as online pundits criticize traditional news organizations as slow, biased and technologically challenged, a group of bloggers is trying to use old-fashioned telephone conference calls to share their ideas with newspaper and television journalists.

The bloggers, who describe themselves as liberal or progressive, say the conference calls are intended to counter what they regard as the much stronger influence of conservative pundits online. Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, the host of the two calls so far, views them as a step toward getting their reports out to mainstream news organizations.

While there is no way to know precisely who dialed in, reporters from news organizations including CBS, The Washington Post, Newsweek, MSNBC and The National Journal asked for a call-in number, according to one participant.

"We hope to build a bridge," Mr. Fertik said, adding that different bloggers would be invited to share their reporting on each call. "We hope that good credible stories that are broken on the Internet find their way into coverage in the mainstream media."

The conference call is a small development in the complex relationship between bloggers and the mainstream media. Traditional journalists largely ignored bloggers when they emerged, but have begun to take note of their influence as online commentators assumed roles in news stories like the flaws in the report by "60 Minutes Wednesday" on President Bush's National Guard service and the comments by the former CNN chief, Eason Jordan, about the military's treatment of journalists in Iraq.

As more news emerges online, or what is reported offline becomes fodder for further investigation, the lines between those operating in the world of online news and commentary and those at the traditional media organizations have become more blurred and sometimes less confrontational. Some news organizations now credit blogs that originate stories, extending to them the treatment other media receive. Some bloggers, in turn, argue that they should receive all the legal privileges that traditional journalists often have, including the right to protect news sources.

Mr. Fertik maintains that the blurring of boundaries has benefited left-wing bloggers less than their adversaries on the right, saying that reports posted on conservative blogs more easily make the jump to the main news media. "The way we perceive it," he said, "is that right-wing bloggers are able to invent stories, get them out on Drudge, get them on Rush Limbaugh, get them on Fox, and pretty soon that spills over into the mainstream media. We, the progressives, we don't have that kind of network to work with."

[…]

It is probably too early to tell how successful the conference calls have been, although Mr. Fertik said that the audio recording of the first call had been downloaded some 2,000 times. During the second call, held last Tuesday, Brad Friedman, who runs bradblog.com, discussed his investigation into accusations of rigged electronic voting machines - a contentious subject that drew questions from listeners, mostly other bloggers.

Some phoned from far away, including places in Canada, to take part in the call, which lasted more than an hour. Listeners asked if a figure in Mr. Friedman's inquiry had taken a lie-detector test and if any traditional news outlets had picked up the story.

Will Femia, a producer at MSNBC.com who monitors blogging, said he was surprised by how well that call worked. "It was a fascinating idea," he said, "and I would also say that it's not a bad idea to try something like that. I know that the news producers that I've spoken with are still engaged in a learning curve on how to extract news from blogs.”

If you would like to participate in future BlogCalls, please go to Democrats.com and specify "BlogCalls" as your reason for contact.