On expanding coverage amid cutbacks.

Big political news begins this week in Denver and will continue in St. Paul, with keener interest from the public than before. All this comes amid shakeups and cutbacks at news organizations across the country.
Poynter's Steve Myers has an interesting report from Denver about what innovations are coming out of necessity this year: new partnerships, everyone's blogging (including conventioneers) and new technologies (widgets and Twitter).
Further comparison of how news organizations are tackling the party conventions this year says a lot about how they see their audiences and what's important.
Poynter'sAl Tompkins reports on how Washingtonpost.com says it will produce seven hours of live anchored video coverage a day.
Tompkins quotes a news release that explains how WashingtonPost.com and Newsweek.com reporters:

Using a cutting-edge cell phone application from Comet Technologies, will be some of the first to live-stream video from their cell phones into a live webcast. Reporters will stream convention developments and questions from people directly onto 'Convention '08,' offering audiences a heightened layer of real-time video coverage. In addition, a live discussion platform online below the video screen will give viewers the ability to interact with anchors and guests.

Also, cheduled to appear on WashingtonPost.com in addition to Post and Newsweek reporters and columnists:

• Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos
• Steve Grove of YouTube
• Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post
• Lee Brenner of MySpace
• Bob Boorstin from Google
• Chris Kelly of Facebook
• Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine
• Eli Pariser from MoveOn.org
• John Amato from Crooks and Liars
• Maria Teresa Peterson of Voto Latino

Tompkins also features an interview with Jim Brady, Washingtonpost.com's executive editor, and Chet Rhodes, the site's assistant managing editor of news video.
It's worth a read, if only to pick up on a few gems:

• Brady: Not everyone will watch all seven hours of coverage, but we think we'll maintain a steady stream of viewers with some increases around major speeches.
• Brady: I don't think it matters to most viewers whether a smart guest is a mainstream media journalist or a blogger.
• Rhodes: Mobile video reporting will be increasingly important to WashingtonPost.com over the next year.

Brady's right that die-hards will eat this up. I'd love to see how their readership responds and how they present all this information such that a more casual follower of politics might get something out of it. He's also correct that -- at this point -- nobody cares whether it's a beat reporter or a blogger who breaks a story. Is there really a difference anyway?
As for network TV (via NYT):

All plan to show the 10 p.m. hour of each convention for four consecutive nights. And new faces will anchor the coverage on each network, with Brian Williams on NBC, Charles Gibson on ABC and Katie Couric on CBS. As it did in 2004, PBS will carry the convention from 8 to 11 each night. The cable networks will be more comprehensive, with Fox News, CNN and MSNBC promising 18 to 20 hours of live coverage a day.

I'm a bit cynical about wall-to-wall TV coverage of anything, but I don't see how nonstop blab from network anchors (or Web anchors, either) on top of nonstop blab from convention procedings does anyone any good.
But then there's this:

Even before the conventions, networks were scrambling for an advantage. [David Bohrman, senior vice president and executive in charge of political coverage at CNN] had high hopes for the the aerial camera, or Skycam: ... it is suspended on four wires, one at each corner of the stadium, and directed by a computer-controlled joystick. “It flies,” he said.

Yee-haw! And big deal. That shot works once at a cost of $100,000. What a waste.