DENVER-Having spent my entire adult life as a newspaper reporter, I learned to accept certain rules of the trade. Editors told you what to write and often, just how to write it. Copy editors pored over every word and issued edicts on spelling and grammar. Reporters were to relate what they observed and report what others said. No opinions were allowed. And above all, there was never, ever any drinking on the job.

I’ve been a blogger now for about four months, and it has been a revelation. I write about what I want, whenever I want. My writings are filled with opinion - mine and everyone else’s. I still think there’s a place for traditional journalism, but as the public votes with their eyeballs and moves toward online news, I’ve decided to follow.

Which leads me to where I am now, in Denver, blogging the Democratic National Convention from The Big Tent, a venture of the Denver-based progressive think-tank Progress Now and the online titan Google, among others.
And I have to say, it’s pretty cool. In 20 years of reporting, I covered presidential visits, school riots, deadly fires, dozens of concerts and about a thousand meetings.

But the rules are different now. To be fair, I’ve never covered a convention, so I can’t compare directly. But as I sit in The Big Tent, shoulder to shoulder with bloggers from the US, Australia, Brazil, Spain and all over the world, I feel new excitement about my greatest loves, writing and covering the news.

Unlike reporters corralled in sterile newsrooms and pitted against each other, bloggers actually share information with each other. The convivial atmosphere leads to stories teeming with information that would never make it to the heavily edited newspaper stories or brief television reports that are the mainstay of the traditional media.

Human interest stuff like what goes on behind the scenes at an interview, who’s yelling at who, who has to stand on a box to interview people…little vignettes in addition to eyewitness accounts that help provide context and depth to the widely reported events that the mainstream media is reporting. It may not always be news as hardcore journalists define it, but increasingly it’s becoming clear that what bloggers write about is what people want to read.

In Denver, the mainstream media is very curious about what’s going on in the Big Tent. Katie Couric was here, and so was Dan Rather. Google provides free massages and fruit smoothies, while vendors serve up good food and New Belgium beer on tap. Which means that I can sit on a couch, watch the convention, blog AND drink beer with some of the smartest (and smart-assed) political geeks around. I have to say, it just barely edges out watching the convention with my husband, on my own couch, beer in hand (sorry, honey).

And that leads me to the top three reasons I am loving being a blogger (Denver DNC edition):

No outsized egos. In The Big Tent, we bloggers aren’t sharing space with starchy scribes from the New York Times or bossy, loud television reporters from the networks who tend to shove print reporters out of the shot. Instead, it’s just a bunch of men and women of all ages and ethnicities, from the USA and beyond, glued to their laptops and filing their stories. If a television crew does come around The Big Tent, it’s not to push us out of the shot, it is because we ARE the shot. Many of us could hardly get our work done because of the constant requests for interviews from the traditional TV and print media.

Very few cops. The police presence around Denver is daunting, as fleets of officers on foot crowd the streets and and special police vehicles bristling with cops and their weapons race around the city. But inside The Big Tent, I saw exactly one police officer the entire time. And he was smiling.

No editors: Newspaper reporters are governed by a strict network of editors and copy-editors. Most bloggers don’t have any editors at all. This can be good and bad. It’s good if you don’t like taking orders and believe that blogging is the truest form of free speech and democracy. But it’s bad when you make an embarrassing grammatical or spelling mistake, because there is no one to save you from yourself.

That’s it, gotta go. I’m headed to Invesco Field tonight to witness history. Hours and hours of it, as we listen to the seemingly dozens of speakers who will go on before the big event. But I’m not complaining. It’s the hottest ticket it town, and I’ve got it right in my hand.