Zennie's Zeitgeist Covered By The Oakland Tribune

The Oakland Tribune's Barbara Grady penned this story below about this blogger and blog's being credentialed for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. But to be fair, the blog is more than me, its the other writers on it, like Tom Hayes and Dave Kaye and Ashley Long, all of whom are credentialed to go to the convention. It's readers like you and of course the overall SBS website system.

Also, it must be reported that the YouTube channel zennie62 is "attached" to this blog and also I said to Barbara that the overall SBS website gets 65,000 unique visitors a month, with Zennie's Zeitgeist a part of that, about between 30 percent and 50 percent of that per month. But yes, this blog did command 44,000 page views and 24,000 visitors on the day after the New Hampshire Primary. That was due to one post on reported election machine voter fraud problems in that state.

Also, I did not contribute $17,000 to the campaign, I raised it over time via the Internet and mostly from a fundraiser at the Mark Hopkins I co-sponsored. But I do not have that kind of money and could not do that anyway as the limit is $2,500. It was an error on her part.

Whatever the details, it was great to have our people recognized. Here's the article:

Oakland blogger to cover Democratic National Convention

By Barbara Grady
Oakland Tribune
Article Created: 06/02/2008 09:05:32 PM PDT

OAKLAND — As the Democratic National Convention gets under way in August, Oakland blogger Zennie Abraham will be on the convention floor with a microphone poised to pick up discussions of race, predatory lending, infrastructure improvement and other issues of concern to Oakland.

Abraham and his Zennie's Zeitgeist blog at zennie2005.blogspot.com have won a coveted credential from the Democratic National Committee to cover the convention as a blogger journalist. He was selected late last week as one of 124 bloggers to receive credentials from an applicant pool of more than 400.

Zennie's Zeitgeist is usually about Abraham's take on political issues of the day — often the Democratic presidential contest — with a smattering of posts about pop culture and sports.

The Democratic National Committee said its criteria in choosing which bloggers to let into what no doubt will be a crowded and history-making Denver convention are that they cover state and local politics and have a high daily audience based on statistics from Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs. Among applicants whose sites met those criteria, the committee looked for blogs that "stand out as an effective online organizing tool and/or agent of change."

Abraham has not been shy to take on controversial issues. He has written about predatory lending, accusing check cashing centers of exploiting the poor, and crime
and criminals.

He already has specific plans for what topics he'll focus on at the convention.
"I'm concerned about (Hillary) Clinton and (Barack) Obama, and the race issue. I really want to see if Democrats are going to rally around Obama unanimously," Abraham said Monday. "I want to know specifically if people who are Clinton supporters, if they are really going to rally behind Obama. If not, I want to know if it is because of race."

And he will report on any discussions of race, whether polite or not.
He also plans to report in detail on the development of a Democratic platform, "with respect to what degree the platform represents domestic issues like predatory lending in credit card rates, our enormous infrastructure problems and what I call keeping jobs at home."

Abraham has been an outspoken supporter of Obama and contributed about $17,000 to his campaign. That partisanship did not seem to phase the DNC, even though many of the other blogs selected are less committed to one candidate.

Many of the blogs represent Democrats from particular states, such as the Blue Jersey, Blue Indiana and Blue Hampshire blogs.

Abraham, 45, is an entrepreneurial businessman, having founded Sports Business Simulations of Oakland five years ago, but he put in his time in politics. He worked for former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown as an economic adviser and then as the Oakland Alameda Sports Commissioner.

Abraham started his blogging career in 2006 writing about sports. But then he couldn't resist talking about politics.

Over time, he separated his own political and cultural ramblings into Zennie's Zeitgeist, distinct from his larger SBS Voices sports blog, and wrote increasingly about politics, following the Democratic campaign as it progressed tooth and nail.
The day after the New Hampshire primary, his blog posting received 44,000 hits. Since then, his audience has steadily grown. He was invited by CNN to post a video blog as a sample for its YouTube CNN Democratic Debate last year. Afterward, links to his blog started showing up elsewhere on other political sites. Now Zennie's Zeitgeist receives about 60,000 unique visitors a month on average.