A collective of liberal bloggers, fueled by online donations and a fanatical devotion to the intricacies of the Libby case, Firedoglake has offered intensive trial coverage, using some six contributors in rotation. They include a former prosecutor, a current defense lawyer, a Ph.D. business consultant and a movie producer, all of whom lodge at a Washington apartment rented for the duration of the trial.

All day long during the trial, one Firedoglake blogger is on duty to beam to the Web from the courthouse media room a rough, real-time transcript of the testimony. With no audio or video feed permitted, the Firedoglake “live blog” has offered the fullest, fastest public report available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial.

While the Libby trial was not, as some reported early on, the first federal trial in D.C. covered by a credentialed blogger (see the appended correction to the New York Times article) it was the first federal trial in which the court intentionally provided such credentials. As Sheldon Snook said before the trial started:

"Bloggers are part of the media landscape and if we were to ignore bloggers, we would be ignoring reality," Snook said.

Some of the topics we'll be covering are the credentialing process, the challenges of blogging in real time, the back-end work required and costs incurred in hosting a live trial blog, what bloggers brought to the mix, how we interacted with and were treated by the MSM and how varied our individual perspectives were, allowing us to provide political commentary as well as legal, both from a prosecution and defense point of view.

But enough about us. The largest portion of the panel will be devoted to your questions. We'll also share some gossip and back-scenes stories. That will be the fun part.

Please join us.

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake]