Should BlogHer Interview Presidential Candidates? Take The Survey

Should BlogHer Interview The Presidential Candidates? TAKE THE BLOGHER SURVEY

BlogHer’s Election 2008 coverage was created in response to the terrific enthusiasm this community demonstrated while developing our non-partisan 2008 Voter Manifesto, twelve policy questions American women have about health care, Iraq, the economy and the environment.

Frankly, however, our political team is confused by the response of presidential candidates to BlogHer, and to some other organizations and blogs by women. For the past six months, BlogHer has invited seven leading presidential candidates — Democratic and Republican, we’re non-partisan — to participate with BlogHer’s influential, passionate community of now 7.6 million techno-savvy women, who write and read thousands of influential blogs. While our editors, Morra Aarons-Mele and Mary Katharine Ham have made in-roads with the campaigns and we do have another year until Election Day, at this point we’ve been told no, both in words and in actions, as have some other women’s blogs and political groups.

And there’s more — what really confuses us is that:

Instead of the presidential candidates, BlogHer has been offered an opportunity to interview two candidate spouses, Ann Romney and Michelle Obama (more in our action timeline below) Just this week, two presidential campaigns (Senators Clinton and Obama) started marketing new Web sites devoted exclusively to women, even specifically to moms. These are the very women who populate BlogHer’s conferences, visit our sites and write the blogs in our ad network. In fact, if they’re trying to reach moms, the majority of BlogHer’s 1,100 BlogHer Ad Network members are mothers, and most blog about that parenting experience! (More detail, including their recruiting letters to women and moms in our action timeline below.)

So our question is, do we want to be marketed to by presidential campaigns or spoken with? And by whom? We think that if they want to get our votes, candidates themselves should answer our questions in the Voter Manifesto. But only if that’s the course this community supports. So — could you please lead us in the right direction by answering these questions and asking your readers to help us too by posting this poll on your blog? We’ll take all our votes and our voices on this poll right to the presidential campaigns.

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Let your voice be heard and Take the BlogHer Survey

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