AN UNASSUMING 23-year-old outsider yesterday took one small step for a blogger, one giant leap for the bloggosphere, as he became the first recognised internet diarist to be welcomed into the White House.

Garrett Graff filed his first report from inside the White House after Scott McClellan, President Bush’s spokesman, conducted his initial morning briefing. The occasion marked another breakthrough for bloggers, the so-called writers of weblogs, who are increasingly making their mark as an influential arm of the news media.

Mr Graff received his pass as editor of FishbowlDC, a blog published by Mediabistro.com, a networking service for journalists, having spent nearly a week fruitlessly trying to gain access to the Brady briefing room, named after James Brady, Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was crippled when John Hinckley tried to assassinate the President in 1981. But the White House press corps urged Mr McClellan to let Mr Graff in and he received a prized day press pass. The decision to open the door to a blogger comes after the recent brush with controversy over Jeff Gannon, a reporter for a Republican website who used a false name and asked highly sympathetic questions of Mr Bush. The reporter has not been seen in the White House since his sideline in X-rated websites was revealed.

The influence of online pundits and commentators is growing. Bloggers revealed that the documents in an election smear story about President Bush’s National Guard service were fake. Several CBS producers lost their jobs as a result.

BLOG BIOGRAPHY

Several blogs have been published as books, such as those by the Baghdad blogger Salam Pax and the prostitute Belle de Jour

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