"That's What She Said" - BlogHer Conference '08 Media Coverage

I've resisted writing about the BlogHer Conference (an annual event hosted by Blogher.com, the most popular community for and guide to blogs by women) namely because I wasn't at the event, which was held July 18-19 in San Francisco. (I am, however, fully intending to go next year.) So what I give you here is all second-hand.

Shortly after it took place, I trolled the internet looking for articles and first-hand accounts...and found surprisingly little coverage courtesy of the big guns of mainstream media:

• CNET posted one of the first stories online with "Women's tech conference draws Macy's, not Google" on July 19.
• The New York Times didn't publish a story until "Blogging's Glass Ceiling" ran July 27, over a week after the conference ended. (Loud hiss from the balcony: the article appeared in the Fashion & Style section.)

The aftershocks that followed the NYT article rocked certain segments of the blogosphere even more than this week's California quake:

• Salon.com' Broadsheet looked at why mainstream media doesn't seem to take female bloggers seriously - and questioned the tone of the NYT story - in "A blogosphere of their own" which was published yesterday morning.
• Mediabistro.com echoed this sentiment when "Is Coverage of the Online Glass Ceiling Just Reinforcing It?" went online later in the day.

Granted, the media criticism of press and web coverage of BlogHer '08 is valuable. But what about actual details of the conference and the growing impact of women flocking to online media to create their own content and give voice to their opinions?

The hands-down best coverage of BlogHer '08 comes from - who else? - the Women's Media Center. Writing for the WMC, Melissa Silverstein goes beyond what I've come to regard as the 'pinking and drinking' angle of the event (i.e. the girly feminization of women's writing and the 'let's party and bond over a bottle of wine' aspects) to concentrate on how the conference amplifies the mission of Blogher: "to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment."

Silverstein, whose own blog Women & Hollywood is part of the BlogHer ad network, sums up the significance of the rise of the female blogger:

In a world where women still don't have parity in Congress, on TV, or in the newspaper columns, it’s a great feeling to know that women are harnessing this new technology to build communities. Who knows, maybe the next feminist revolution is already happening: you just need to go online to find it.