Valerie Jarrett reaches out to (a few) BlogHers
August 27, 2009 | Barack Obama,BlogHer,Politics,Valerie Jarrett
Valerie Jarrett, a White House senior adviser, wanted to “reach out to bloggers” during the BlogHer conference in Chicago in July. So she met with 17 of them.
She held a private meeting with an exclusive group of bloggers at a conference with about 1,500 attendees. Why not the whole group? It’s not as if she didn’t have large groups on her schedule.
She was the keynote speaker at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, which had about 2,000 attendees in August. She even brought along two other Obama administration officials.
She was also the keynote speaker at the Netroots Nation Convention, where she took questions from some of the 2,000 attendees.
Why the exclusion at BlogHer? Is it because BlogHer isn’t supposed to be political? (Even though founder Lisa Stone asked Jarrett, “What should we do?” in terms of advocacy.) Or does the administration not take BlogHer attendees seriously? Or something else?
August 27th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Actually, I think it’s cooler that she met with a small group at BlogHer. Being the keynote speaker is not the same thing – it’s a speech, not a dialogue, even if she did take questions at Netroots Nation. From what I heard, that small lunch was a real dialogue – people talked, she listened.
August 28th, 2009 at 7:13 am
She also met with smaller groups at the NABJ convention.
August 28th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Hi Becky:
Here’s the scoop: We approached the White House for their participation at BlogHer ’09. After months of discussion and various possibilities, the White House offered, very close to conference time, to send Valerie Jarrett to discuss health care. They asked to meet with 10-15 bloggers, moms in our network with specific health-related stories. We added additional bloggers with health stories or a health focus to the list. We chose the bloggers based on health blogging rather than their conservative or liberal bias (but did make sure both sides of the spectrum were in the room).
The dialog has just been started. We are planning similar events (conference calls) in the future where we have asked *both* parties to allow BlogHer to put together an omni-partisan, diverse panel of political, childfree, health-focused and mom bloggers who are interested in discussing health care reform. Would you be interested in participating in such calls?