I've been pretty hard on the bloggers covering the Democratic Conventon. The "major media" have pushed them aside, doing what the bloggers thought was their job (interpretation) more aggressively, and getting those interpretations out the door efficiently. (That's the official convention logo, from volunteer organizers.)

But there are two stories the bloggers have grabbed, and both are important. The first is a tech story. The second might be termed the atmospherics. And they're closely related.

First, the Wi-Fi network in the convention area was woefully inadequate. Bloggers were looking for wires, or walking outside in order to get some connectivity. Having a spot to put your stuff was also impossible.

A political convention isn't really about politicians, but about the media. It's really their trade show. Bloggers were like the start-ups holding tiny booths in corners of the hall, having trouble getting their demos working. The major networks (and by this I also mean the cable networks) have the huge booths, all set up a week earlier, the special interview rooms, and everything backed-up.

Second, while people like Howard Fineman did a fine job getting into parties and sighting various politicians, bloggers got into town and checked out the atmospherics, sometimes poignantly.They also showed how the convention's security was a Potemkin Village, with credential swapping used to overflow the hall just as I saw 16 years ago, when Democrats met in Atlanta.

There's more to say. Some bloggers acted as a "truth squad" against "major media spin." Some did the celebrity-sighting game in various corners of the hall that the major media didn't cover.

But the main contribution of bloggers to this convention lay in their coverage of the tech stories and the stories surrounding the convention. In terms of covering what was going on in the hall, they could have done better staying at home.

I think Josh Marshall put it quite well. "I've never been much for the blog triumphalism that seems always to be so much a part of the blog universe. Blogs make up a small, specialized niche within the interdependent media ecosystem -- mainly not producers but primary or usually secondary consumers -- like small field mice, ferrets, or bats."

Now, instead of just seeing the elephants and the donkeys we are, thanks to blogs, seeing the whole political ecosystem, all creatures great and small.