Ryne McClaren has an excellent post about, among other things, how he stumbled upon the South Dakota blogs. Excerpt:
As the South Dakota Senate race started to heat up, I stumbled across a guy by the name of Jason Van Beek. As you know, I'm from South Dakota too, so this was a pretty big deal. I sent him a complementary e-mail, we linked each other, it was exciting. (You had to be there I guess.) Next, Jon Lauck and Steve Sibson came to my attention. Then Quentin Riggins. Hell, all of the sudden there were a bunch of South Dakota bloggers. Somebody came up with a name for this little group of misfits, and the Dakota Alliance was born. They asked me to participate, and I was glad to. Randell Beck, meet the blogosphere. Not long afterward, I was linked by Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan and Mark Steyn's web page while blogging about a Randell Beck meltdown. My hitcounter topped out at around 15,000 hits in just a few hours. Ho-ly shee-it. Next the group added The Bird, Wally Waltner and Wes Roth. We had a conference. Jay Reding came. Jay Reding! John Hinderaker too! The Argus Leader ran a front page story on us, and their editor had some sharp words for what we were doing. A good time was -- and still is being -- had by all. And again, the rest is history. But let it be known that when future state races are blogged with a great national ado, a group of people from the sticks were first. So here we are. The President was re-elected. John Thune knocked the legs from under Tom Daschle, the Senate Minority Leader. Republicans made gains in both houses. Was it because of blogs? Who knows. We sure as hell didn't hurt any of our candidates, that's for sure. We might have even brought new eyes to bear on issues that wouldn't otherwise have been noticed or discussed (see also: Rathergate; Kranzgate; Mansiongate; Hug-gate; and other -gates too numerous to mention.)
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