

Google plans to set up an 8,000 square foot headquarters at the Democratic convention this year to enable hundreds of bloggers to better cover the event.

Around 500 citizen journos attending the convention in Denver each paid $100 to use the facilities, which include Google software and services and a public kiosk where anyone can upload videos to YouTube – hard to believe, but this will be the first presidential year for Google's video sharing service, which debuted in 2005. Google will also be demoing new tools, including a real-time keyword search of convention speech videos.

Two hundred are signed up for the GOP convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where they will offer similar facilities.

The Google media denizens will be competing with nearly

15,000 MSM reporters deployed to cover the conventions, which some media critics have deemed a “waste.” The networks spend millions on these increasingly newsless events and while print outlets shell out considerably less it still costs them considerably more for the infrastructure the "amateurs" are getting for a single Benjamin. From a signal to noise ratio, that seems to make a whole lot more sense.

Washington Post and Newsweek announced yesterday that they will be experimenting with some new media themselves, with their correspondents live streaming video from cell phones, in a bid to tap into that massive market of those who favor raw viral videos over packaged pieces.

But even though it just means more reporters descending on a non-event this isn't just more of a bad thing, since it could be among the driving forces that eventually cause a total re-think of what is news and how it "has" to be covered.

Google, which coyly continues to eschew the notion that it is a media company, is greasing the skids of a what could some day (another four years?) lead to a paradigm shift: This is a direct challenge to the pro press corps on strategy and tactics as well a competition for the stories and tidbits that actually will resonate from the hall but to define.

Our money in on the "amateurs" to both make and break news.

Google Will Offer Services for Bloggers at Conventions [Wall Street Journal]

*Photo: Flickr/denverjeffrey

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