Three years later, this kind of direct digital contact with citizens has trickled down to the local political scene.

Three out of nine Chapel Hill Town Council members are bloggers. They maintain their own online diaries, known as Web logs. So do county commissioners Mike Nelson and Mike Cross in Orange and Chatham, respectively.

In Wake Forest, Town Manager Mark Williams writes a blog on the town Web site to inform the public about winter road maintenance, public meetings and capital projects. Other North Carolina politicians such as former Sen. John Edwards and U.S. Reps. Heath Shuler and Brad Miller also blog.

"It's a natural progression in the arena of of communication from elected officials to constituents," said Ferrel Guillory, a former journalist who directs the Center on Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill. "It really has added a new dimension to politics."

Gary Pearce, a former Democratic campaign consultant, writes a Raleigh-centered blog called Talking About Politics along with longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn.

"It just enables a politician to engage in a more direct and intimate conversation with people," Pearce said. "It's to politics today what television was in the 1960 [presidential] campaign. It changes everything."

Pearce said the Triangle's political bloggers are centered in Orange County because its politics tend to be more liberal.

"With conservatives, it's been talk radio and Fox News, and progressives and liberals seem to be more drawn to the Internet," Pearce said. "I can't explain why that is."

Cary Mayor Ernie McAlister said he prefers to state his opinions face-to-face, but he does keep up with various citizen blogs through the Web site carypolitics.org.

"Maybe I'm a little bit more old-fashioned," he said. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if I saw it become more common as a way for folks in elected office to stay connected with and communicate with their constituency."

Some bloggers, such as Chatham County's Cross and Chapel Hill Town Council member Laurin Easthom, write exclusively about their work as elected officials. Others, such as Nelson and Town Council members Sally Greene and Mark Kleinschmidt, cover a range of issues important to them.

"They're very individual. They're very personal," Nelson said. "There are probably going to be as many different styles of blogging as there are people who blog. It's very democratic."

Recently, for example, Easthom virtually debated developer David Ravin, whose Crosland development company which is trying to build 123 apartments along Interstate 40 in northern Chapel Hill.

In e-mail she posted on her blog, Ravin said Crosland had already spent three years on the proposal and that the town should let projects already in the pipeline move through the review process.

Easthom took issue with the request, which comes as some residents are seeking a broader study of growth in the area.

"This project is going to exist in the future with all of the rest -- whether it takes four weeks or four years to approve," she wrote. "We will all live with the result forever."

Nelson, Kleinschmidt and Greene rarely stake out such strong positions in their blogs, at least on local issues.

Nelson, a full-time lobbyist for the Conservation Council of North Carolina, tends to write about environmental issues.

Kleinschmidt, a death-row attorney who is openly gay, often writes about the death penalty and gay and lesbian issues.

"There aren't many people who will pick up the banner and fight on those issues," Kleinschmidt said. "Who else is going to stand up for them?"

Greene covers the most diverse and heady subject matter of any local politician.

"On law, life, literature and a little politics" is her blog's description, and it's apt.

In recent posts, she has written about an art exhibit on student protests in the 1960s, the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898 and the philosophy of the late Frenchman Paul Ricoeur.

Guillory said it's too early to say whether such wide-ranging blogs will help or hurt the politicians who write them.

"I really don't know if it's a political plus or it's a political minus," he said. "Our elected officials are part-time people. They've got other lives. They've got personal lives.

"People are going to write about what interests them."