‘Justice Sunday’ organizers welcome bloggers

At least eight Internet writers have agreed to watch the event from a wireless internet-enabled “blogger’s row” overlooking the 3,400-seat sanctuary at Two Rivers Baptist Church. Those from outside Nashville will be provided with plane fare and hotel rooms, said Charmaine Yoest, a senior fellow with the Family Research Council who is organizing the internet coverage.

“The bloggers bring an element of democracy to the event,” said Yoest, who will also write about the event on her conservative Web log, “Reasoned Audacity.” “It gives people another venue for tapping into the event who couldn’t be there.”

The Aug. 14 rally is second in a series of televised church demonstrations meant to pressure legislators into hewing to evangelical positions on the judiciary. The first event, held at a Louisville, Ky., church in April, called on viewers to flood the phone lines of senators who refused to block Democrats from filibustering several of President Bush’s nominees for the federal bench.

This time, speakers including House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, are expected to call for the confirmation of Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, said Amber Hildebrand, a spokeswoman for the Family Research Council.

Those invited said it was evidence of the Internet’s increasing influence in politics.

“Everybody’s trying to get blog buzz,” said Jeff Jarvis, 51, a self-described liberal New Jersey blogger who turned down the invitation. “Blogs are just people talking. If you can become part of that conversation, you’re at the town square.”

The offer to pay expenses played a role in his declining, said Jarvis, a founding editor of Entertainment Weekly and former critic for People and TV Guide. “Any newspaper would say, ‘No we’re not going to accept this,'” he said.

But Yoest said paying expenses were necessary to attract bloggers who would not otherwise be able to come, adding that she would not have made that offer to professional journalists.

Those involved said the experiment will keep people talking about the event after traditional media would have dropped the subject. “Blogging shows its biggest value after the event when people begin to chew over what was said and what it meant,” said Bill Hobbs, 41, a Nashville blogger and former print reporter who plans to attend.

Yoest, who worked for now-Ambassador Robert H. Tuttle in the Ronald Reagan White House shortly after graduating college in 1986, got the idea to invite other bloggers while traveling on an expenses-paid trip to blog the July G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. Some bloggers’ travel expenses there were paid by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as were the expenses of some editorial writers from U.S. newspapers.