Natchez bloggers go to convention

By Vershal Hogan (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Friday, August 22, 2008

NATCHEZ — When the Democratic National Convention opens next week in Denver, Casey Ann Hughes will be right there, pounding away on her computer’s keyboard.

A self-described dyed-in-the-wool liberal, Hughes and Diane Bunch, one of her four blogging partners, will be the writers for the official Mississippi state blog for the convention. That means they will be seated with the Mississippi delegation and will be posting blogs from the convention floor.

Hughes has written about local politics on “The Natchez Blog” at www. natchezms.blogspot.com since 2006. Though her focus is local, Hughes filled out an application to be a blogger at the convention and sent it to the national party.

Only one other blog applied from Mississippi, and the Natchez Blog won out.

Keeping with her locally themed writing, Hughes said she plans to focus on the Mississippi delegation.

“I’ll be looking for the human interest side of things,” she said. “We have a father-daughter combo in the delegation, so I’ll be looking at that, and if there is any really big national thing, I am going to focus on how the people from Mississippi react to it.”

Another angle Hughes said she wants to examine is those people outside the convention who were not allowed in.

“I was told to be careful when talking to protesters, because when they start arresting protestors, they arrest everyone around them,” she said.

Because Sen. Hillary Clinton’s name will be placed in nomination at the convention, Hughes — a Clinton supporter — will be attending the Clinton-intensive floor events on Tuesday and Wednesday, while her partner, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, will attend the events on Monday and Thursday.

“We have to do that because, though it is a group blog, we were only given one credential,” Hughes said. “That is the only scheduled thing we have decided.”

There will be a number educational opportunities offered at the convention, and Hughes said she will probably attend some of those.

“I was overwhelmed to find out just how much goes on at the convention,” she said. “I thought it would be all voting and party the rest of the time.”

Though the Natchezians have to pay their own way to the convention, they have received some help from several local people and from the new social networking website www.zannel.com, on which they will also blog and post pictures and video from the convention.

She doesn’t know what exactly to expect, but Hughes said she went to the Mississippi state Democratic convention earlier this year and practiced.

“I just typed and posted as things happened,” she said. “That’s pretty much what I will be doing in Denver.”

The convention begins Monday.