AOL Launches Political Blog Network

Posted on October 17, 2006

Add another one to the growing list of blogs launching to cover the midterm elections. The MediaPost reports that AOL has launched The Stump, a political blog featuring posts from 17 political bloggers.

At launch, the new section, "The Stump," contains blogs by 17 political bloggers hired specifically for the venture. The bloggers represent a wide range of political ideologies; while some of them also maintain personal blogs, the content they post on AOL is exclusive to the site, said Lewis D'Vorkin, editor in chief, AOL News.
In addition, through a deal with ABC, visitors to The Stump also can ask questions of TV journalists Sam Donaldson, George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper and Brian Roberts. Videos of the journalists' responses will be posted each Friday beginning this week, with Donaldson.
With The Stump, AOL aims to both increase users' interaction with the site and expose more AOL users to Web logs, D'Vorkin said. "Our goal is to open up the blogging experience," he said, adding that the blogs allow for users to post unmoderated comments.

AOL has also recently launched blog networks for sports called FanHouse (details here) and a blog network for stocks called Blogging Stocks (details here). AOL also owns the Weblogs, Inc. blog network.

This continues a long series of political blog launches from the MSM. Other recent launches include The BBC's: The Reporters, CNN Political Ticker, New York Magazine's Early and Often, The New York Times' The Caucus and MSNBC's First Read.