Excerpts of the On-the-scene conference Weblog organised by the Newspapers Association of America. See also below a list of proeminent weblogs.

"All online users are votors or potential voters," said David Rapp. Politics, he contends, is better than sports because users are participants and not just spectators.

Rapp outlined three elements political Web sites need:
1. Game day reporting
2. Stats, stats and more stats
3. Provocative columnists.

Seven years ago, the Internet played no role in the elections, said Peter C. Waldheim, senior strategist and producer/online operations, Democratic Congressional Campaign Commititee. In the 2000 election, the Web played a roll similar to televisison in the Kennedy/Nixon debates. People who saw the Bush/Gore debate on TV thought Gore won, and the people who read it online thought bush won, said Waldheim.

There are 170 million voters online, said Waldheim. A year ago this month, Howard Dean had 450 online supporters. Today, he has 600,000 online supporters, and most are donors, he added.

Daniel Weintraub, Public Affairs columnist and writer from The Sacramento Bee, said that, during his state's recent gubenetorial race, posts to his California Insider political blog went from 200 a day to 20,000 a day. Most of them were likely younger voters, he added.

Independent political bloggers have become very popular in this environment (see below). Sites like The Daily Dish and The Talking Points Memo are not only addictive for political insiders but where grass roots users go for unvarnished information. Their ability to extract payment for their efforts also is impressive. Weintraub said Talking Points editor Joshua Micah Marshall recently asked his users for money to go to New Hampshire to cover the state presidential primary, and had sufficient funds overnight to make the trip. Some 4,000 subscribers to Daily Dish pay $20 a year for a premium e-mail newsletter product.

Weintraub says that's plenty for publishers to subsidize the cost of a reporter or two to apply more attention to the subject during an eventful political season.

Waldheim suggested there might be more money in obtaining sponsorships from major brand advertisers like Coca-Cola to perhaps support sites dedicated to "good government." Rapp identified two kinds of political advertising -- the influence ads, which sites like CQ and WashingtonPost.com receive to "send a message" to legislators in Washington, and the grassroots issue advocacy advertising that is geared toward getting voters to put their own individual pressure on their representatives or senators. "Newspapers should have the opportunity to tap into that" latter sort of advertising, Rapp said.

Karen A.B. Jagoda, president and founder of the E-voter Institute said that most politicians don't advertise online because they don't view it as an "emotive" or persuasive enough medium. But new campaign restrictions on broadcast spending 30 and 60-days out from the general election could be a boon to online newspapers and other grassroots Web sites this year. She advised newspapers to look at rich media advertising and to make a greater effort to tout the kinds of traffic Weintraub's site has experienced as a way of capitalizing on the fact that politicians' need to reach voters actually will increase during this vital period when their TV ads go dark.

URLs for the Ultimate Elections panel:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/insider
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/insider
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/files/specials/interactives/elex2004/campaignMinute.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2093760
http://www.dailykos.com
http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/
http://www.factcheck.org
http://herndon2.sdrdc.com/dcdev
http://nrcc.org/nrcccontents/batn
http://offthekuff.com/mt
http://www.tray.com
http://www.politics1.com
http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/politics http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor http://www.southdakotaelections.com
http://www.sptimes.com/election
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
http://volokh.com/
http://www.the-hamster.com/
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/files/specials/interactives/candidate_gallery/index1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/elections/2004
http://andrewsullivan.com/
www.cq.com

written by NAA Electronic Media Director Melinda Gipson.