(cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Launching a new blog is difficult. This probably doesn’t come as much of a revelation to many here; getting an audience and attracting readers on a consistent basis is hard to do. In the weeks after the election, HigherPie and I began to put into place the infrastructure of a new blog called Progressive Wave. However, because we are both college students, we’ve had to shelve a lot of potential progress because of the impending final exam period. Because of a lot of lost time, it’s hard to say whether or not people will remember the work we’ll be doing once the 110th Congress convenes, so I’d like to take this chance to re-introduce ourselves and our mission. For those of you who would like to read an extended version of what will appear below, I welcome you to read a previous diary I wrote more than a month ago on Progressive Wave.
In a nutshell, Progressive Wave will solely be a blog that chronicles our new representatives and senators in Washington, D.C. We’re looking to do a mix of traditional blogging – covering bills that our congressmen and congresswomen will be introducing, scouring local newspapers for articles written about them, and so forth – while mixing in an element of citizen journalism. That is, if we have the opportunity, we would also like involved bloggers to do firsthand coverage on their local representatives or senators should they do a public event, for example. For example, I plan on driving down to Washington, D.C. on January 4 – the day the 110th Congress is sworn in – to cover the day’s festivities with Rep.-elect Patrick Murphy (PA-08) and Rep.-elect Joe Sestak (PA-07). Essentially, we’d like to mix Blogging 1.0 with what kid oakland calls Blogging 2.0.

One of the problems with recruiting bloggers for this project is that it is so big. We have 41 new representatives in the House (as one can tell, we still need to add Ciro Rodriguez) and 9 new senators in the Senate. Here’s who we have covered at the moment:

  • AZ-05: Harry Mitchell
  • AZ-08: Gabrielle Giffords
  • CA-11: Jerry McNerney
  • CT-02: Joe Courtney
  • CT-05: Chris Murphy
  • HI-02: Mazie Hirono
  • IA-01: Bruce Braley
  • IA-02: Dave Loebsack
  • KS-02: Nancy Boyda
  • KY-03: John Yarmuth
  • MN-05: Keith Ellison
  • NY-19: John Hall
  • NY-20: Kirsten Gillenbrand
  • PA-07: Joe Sestak
  • PA-08: Patrick Murphy
  • PA-10: Chris Carney
  • TX-22: Nick Lampson
  • WI-08: Steve Kagen
  • MD-Sen: Ben Cardin
  • PA-Sen: Bob Casey
  • VA-Sen: Jim Webb

That’s already a lot of people that we’ll have coverage on. But there are still many newly-elected representatives and senators that we do not have bloggers for:

  • CO-07: Ed Perlmutter
  • FL-11: Kathy Castor
  • FL-16: Tim Mahoney
  • FL-22: Ron Klein
  • GA-04: Hank Johnson
  • IN-02: Joe Donnelly
  • IN-08: Brad Ellsworth
  • IN-09: Baron Hill
  • MD-03: John Sarbanes
  • MN-01: Tim Walz
  • NC-11: Heath Shuler
  • NH-01: Carol Shea-Porter
  • NH-02: Paul Hodes
  • NJ-13: Albio Sires
  • NY-11: Yvette Clark
  • NY-24: Michael Arcuri
  • OH-06: Charlie Wilson
  • OH-13: Betty Sutton
  • OH-18: Zack Space
  • PA-04: Jason Altmire
  • TN-09: Steve Cohen
  • TX-23: Ciro Rodriguez
  • VT-AL: Peter Welch
  • MN-Sen: Amy Klobuchar
  • MO-Sen: Claire McCaskill
  • MT-Sen: Jon Tester
  • OH-Sen: Sherrod Brown
  • RI-Sen: Sheldon Whitehouse
  • VT-Sen: Bernie Sanders

As you can see, we will still need many more bloggers to help us out. If you live in one of the districts or states listed above – even if they are already covered – we would appreciate any assistance you could provide. For the most part, to be frank, there will probably be many days where there’s nothing definitive to write about. That being said, this is an open-source project when it comes to content; you write when you want to, about what you want to. The only requirement is that it pertains to the particular representative or senator, or the event noted will affect their district or state in a large manner.

So if you are interested, please let me know here. The only thing required is your email address, so if your email is not listed in your profile, just shoot me an email at the address in my profile. HigherPie will get an email out to you quickly with the sign-up, as well as an inquiry for a brief bio about yourself (which can contain as much or as little information as you’d like). We’ve already written some content, but we will not officially begin to blog on a regular basis until January 4. In the meantime, feel free to join our group at DFALink.

Finally, I’d like any suggestions possible on how best to effectively run our new blog. Whether it be how to ensure that some sort of readership level is attained, or whether you have qualms about the design – any advice is welcome. I truly do appreciate it.