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BlueNC comes of age

BlueNC has come of age.

Started in 2006, the liberal group blog has had its moments in the political spotlight: Helping Larry Kissell's unsuccessful Congressional campaign in 2006, targeting a proposed Navy landing field on the coast, breaking the news of Senate candidate's Jim Neal's sexual orientation in a live blog.

But none will be as big as next week's live online debate between Democratic gubernatorial candidates Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue.

The debate will be notable in a few ways. Moore and Perdue have only squared off a handful of times in this campaign. It is also certainly a historic first for two gubernatorial candidates to debate online. And it marks a milestone in the growing power of the netroots in North Carolina.

Dome is working on a dead-tree story about BlueNC's role in the Democratic primary. We're interviewing readers and contributors of the site in an open thread here and have started a profile of co-founder James Protzman here and an FAQ on the site here.

If you have thoughts on the site, please share them in the comments below.

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No relation.

Submitted by Anglico on March 26, 2008 - 2:51pm.

Here's a funny story, though.

A long, long time ago, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina owned the URL (www.bluenc.com), but they let it expire. Check out the way-back machine. I'm guessing they're not too wild about how things turned out.

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Re: BlueNC comes of age

Submitted by awbeal on March 26, 2008 - 2:21pm.

Curious: back in the 2004 election, there was a similarly named blog called Blue North Carolina (http://bluenc.blogspot.com/). Any relation?

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You should stop by again

Submitted by Anglico on March 26, 2008 - 1:47pm.

We're slowly emerging from adolescence angst, though there are still some things that drive a person to swear.

I think it's safe to say we're no longer R-rated. More like PG-13.

James

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Re: BlueNC comes of age

Submitted by bmullis on March 26, 2008 - 1:02pm.

Is the lewd vitriol that constituted the site in its infancy still online? I think that any newsworthy account of BlueNC must take into account the R-rated nature of its publications until circa 2007.

Why doesn't the Dome sponsor live-blog debates?

I suppose that in NC it isn’t necessary for Democrat would-be executives to feign their multi-party appeal, thus an association with BlueNC presents zero electoral problems. When taking the site’s history into account, I believe that is a sad indicator of the quality of political dialogue in the state.

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