Power Line

History

Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker had been actively publishing op-eds, magazine articles and research articles for about a decade. On the weekend of Memorial Day, 2002, Hinderaker invited Johnson to start publishing on the Power Line site he had recently created. Johnson credited Hugh Hewitt's radio broadcasts as being the "first big break and recognition" the site received.

In 2004, Power Line was named Time magazine's first-ever "Blog of the Year".{{Cite magazine |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504024550/https://time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1009913,00.html |archive-date=2012-05-04 |url-status=dead}} When AOL added blogs to their news website in 2007, Power Line was one of the five blogs included. A 2007 memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee described Power Line as one of the five best-read national conservative blogs.{{Cite news

In 2009, CBS News described Powerline as "a prominent conservative blog." In 2014, CBS News reported the site had half a million readers and eight million page views.

Contributors

The main contributors to Power Line are John H. Hinderaker, Scott W. Johnson, Steven F. Hayward, and Lloyd Billingsley. Susan Vass, writing under the name "Ammo Grrrll", contributes a humor column to the site every Friday.

Rathergate

Power Line gained widespread recognition during the 2004 Killian documents controversy relating to a CBS report on George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, starting with a post entitled "The Sixty-First Minute"; Powerline is credited with helping break the story. Conservatives (including Power Line, National Review Online and Little Green Footballs) referred to the controversy as "Rathergate". The blogs and their readers questioned the authenticity of the documents, presenting hints of supposed forgery. After noting that the alleged documents used a proportional font, Power Line helped advance the story, triggering coverage by mainstream media outlets. Dan Rather apologized and resigned from the CBS anchor chair.

References

References

1. (6 November 2009). "Are Democrats, Too, Facing a Civil War?". [[The New York Times]].
2. (14 December 2011). "Holder Holds the Voting Line at LBJ Library". [[Texas Monthly]].
3. (17 April 2007). "The Mourning After". [[Slate (magazine).
4. (11 March 2021). "CNN's Tapper battles GOP senator over mean tweets". [[The Hill (newspaper).
5. (4 October 2005). "Bloggers Fire Away on Miers Nomination". [[National Public Radio]].
6. (13 January 2010). "Harry Reid's racial imbroglio". [[The Boston Globe]].
7. "Power Line".
8. "The Claremont Institute: John H. Hinderaker".
9. (2005). "Blog". [[Thomas Nelson (publisher).
10. (26 August 2006). "Interviews Scott Johnson". [[Frontline (American TV program)]].
11. (February 22, 2007). "Introducing Power Line AOL {{!}} Power Line".
12. "Power Line Blog | News Bloggers".
13. (24 January 2007). "In Pictures: The Web Celeb 25". [[Forbes]].
14. (23 June 2009). "How Not To Discredit A Poll". CBS News.
15. "Best Local Bloggers In Minnesota". [[CBS News]] - CBS Minnesota.
16. (June 20, 2011). "About Us".
17. (12 December 2018). "The 2018 CRB Christmas Reading List". [[Claremont Institute]].
18. (2007). "''Rathergate''". [[Public Broadcasting Service]].
19. Scott Johnson, Scott. (September 9, 2004). "The sixty-first minute". Power Line.
20. (3 February 2005). "Who's got the power?". [[The Harvard Gazette]].
21. (9 November 2015). "A Critic's Confession". [[Washington Examiner]].
22. (28 September 2012). "We'll Always Have Dan Rather". [[Slate (magazine).
23. (4 November 2015). "Need to Know: Rather Not". [[National Review]].
24. (20 June 2005). "Courthouse Shooting in Seattle; Bolton Nomination Before the Senate ... Again; The Hunt of Osama bin Laden Continues; Saddam and the Downing Street Memo in the Blogs". [[CNN]].
25. Dan Rather with Digby Diehl, Rather Outspoken,: My Life In the News (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2013), page 59.