Two weeks before the federal election Ryan Warawa, the Conservative candidate for Vancouver East, sat drinking a Keith’s and watching the leaders debate in a downtown bar. He kept up a steady stream of dialogue with the characters onscreen. “Your moustache is nice, but we’d like to know what your plans are!” he yelled at Jack Layton’s image.

As politicians go, Warawa is not a dry one.

But a mention of the word blog caused him to clam up. Affable and forthcoming on every other topic, he insisted on scheduling an official interview to talk about the story that thrust him – a no-hope candidate in a stalwart NDP riding –into the media spotlight.

A week earlier, blogger Jerad Gallinger unearthed posts in which Warawa bashed two Liberal MPs and fellow Conservative Peter McKay and flouted party policy by advocating the legalization of marijuana and prostitution.

Two other candidates were dropped by their parties and the plagiarism accusations against Prime Minister Stephen Harper snowballed in an election that saw unpaid, amateur bloggers break some of the most damaging stories of the two month-long battle.

With the Federal election over, the bloggers who initiated the high-profile coups are looking for their next big scores. And election season is just getting started here in B.C., with municipal races underway and a provincial showdown in May.

The modus operandi of the bloggers who made a name for themselves in the past two months is in some ways similar to that of traditional journalists. Said Gallinger, “I’m not employed by a journalistic organization, but I’m doing the same type of work and the same type of research.”

His scoop on Warawa was no accident. “I figured, who would be the likely person to have this type of post out there?” Gallinger decided to look for candidates who were young and running in urban ridings. When he came upon Warawa’s name and noticed his blog was locked to non-members, he used Google’s cached pages to read old entries.

Blogger Robert Jago, who was responsible for the story that caused the Green Party to withdraw John Shavluk from Newton North Delta, also took pains to ensure his information was accurate.

After someone directed him to a forum comment in which Shavluk called the twin towers “your shoddily built Jewish world bank headquarters,” Jago cross-checked the controversial post with others he knew Shavluk had written.

“If it’s an imposter, it’s quite a dedicated one,” Jago wrote.

The bloggers deny that they are more web-savvy than the average reporter. Said Gallinger, “I wasn’t doing anything complicated. I was doing a search for the guy’s name.”

M.J. Murphy agreed. Like Gallinger, he used a Google cache search to reveal posts in which Toronto Centre Conservative candidate Chris Reid called Canadians “a castrated, effeminate population.” Reid withdrew from the race days after Murphy’s post went up.

“I’m doing nothing that a reporter couldn’t do,” Murphy said, adding, “It took me less than an hour.”

Murphy thinks downsized newsrooms and lack of time mean that reporters don’t have the resources to look into the kind of stories he is breaking. His relationship to the traditional news media is cooperative, rather than competitive. “You’re hoping the mainstream media is going to pick up on something you do and broadband it,” he said.

Gallinger, Jago, and Murphy are all unabashedly partisan – and for different parties. On the ‘about’ section of his blog, Jago states, “This is a biased blog. It reflects a Conservative point of view”. Murphy’s blog is subtitled, “Tips on beating down the Conservative menace.” He and Gallinger both belong to the left and centre-left blogging group “Progressive Bloggers.”

None have any plans to guide their blogs towards the journalistic tradition of objectivity. Gallinger said his blog “allows me to [express my own opinion], which I really value.”

So far, the professionals have been impressed. David Akins, a parliamentary correspondent for the CanWest News Service, wrote of Jago’s post, “Chalk this one up to the blogosphere. So far as I know, no mainstream paper, radio, or TV outlet reported this before [Green Party leader Elizabeth ] May canned Shavluk.”

But not everyone thinks blogging represents a bold new era for journalism. One comment on Gallinger’s blog read, “How many more blog bloopers can we expect to see before this is over?” Said another, “Seriously, this is getting a little old.”

Gallinger hopes to see less gotcha-style journalism in the next election. But his mandate won’t change.

“[I’m] trying to keep people honest,” he said.

Warawa lost the election to Libby Davies, the 15-year incumbent. Calls for an “official interview” to discuss his blog were not returned.

Rick Mercer wrote an article about Warawa in the Globe and Mail, which was titled “Oh, no. I was going to run for office one day – but I have a blog!”

“Rumour is that he has been run through a Conservative re-education camp" Mercer wrote. "A few pistol whips from a flak-jacket-clad Peter McKay… topped off with a chemical lobotomy, and the boy is as good as new… He will make one hell of a cabinet minister some day.”

“At least I had to chuckle,” Warawa said.

Kate Allen studies journalism at the University of British Columbia.