Stepping into the Spotlight

Following in Jane Hamsher's footsteps, I've decided to sign on to the Spotlight Project, a kind of blog experiment that lets readers forward posts they particularly like to members of the media they think ought to be reading it.

I'm a bit tired tonight, and Jane explains it so well, I'm going to just cut and paste her instructions:

At the bottom of each post you'll now see a "Spotlight" tag next to the permalink. Clicking it takes you to The Spotlight Project, which offers you a list of contact information which allows you to forward the post of your choice to specific journalists. I'll ask that folks consider several things when doing this:

-- Please be polite and reasonable. We don’t want folks to get angry and up-in-arms over a bunch of ad hominem attacks.

-- Since it's a serious tool that could have a profound effect as we try to re-shape the dominant narrative with key opinion makers, abusing it could not only lessen its effectiveness, it could neutralize it completely.

-- Praise is just as important -- if not more so -- than criticism.

-- We may have some initial birth pangs, so if you have any problems please report them here.

As Jane says, it's a potentially important tool in integrating the blogosphere in the larger public discourse. I think journalists and bloggers are starting to figure out their symbiotic relationship, and this is one way of helping disseminate information within the traditional press that otherwise might go unnoticed.

Give it a spin and let me know what you think.

POSTSCRIPT: Hope you all noticed that I finally posted Sara's bio, now that she's officially part of the team, over in the blue sidebar. I also created links to her two excellent series, Cracks in the Wall and Tunnels and Bridges. Be sure to check them out.