In 2008, Professor David Domke and 16 undergraduates created a blogging project focused on that year’s presidential election. They traveled to cover caucuses in Idaho, Washington and Texas, and covered primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Their content was highlighted in the Seattle Times, on huffingtonpost, at the Houston Chronicle, the Idaho Statesman, Crosscut, The Advocate, and countless other sites. Domke reflected on this experience in a piece for Crosscut.

The 2012 election season has arrived, and a new crew of UW Communication Department bloggers is here. The Department and Seattle Times are partnering to create “UW Election Eye 2012” — an on-the-ground blog about the 2012 election season, as seen through the eyes of Communication students and faculty. The blog is described this way: “We seek to provide compelling insight into some of the lives, experiences, ideas, hopes and fears, and words of the menagerie of people who engage in Campaign 2012. This includes candidates, their handlers and strategists, diehard activists, voters, journalists, and anyone and anything else that grabs our attention. We write, we take photos, we shoot video and record audio — all with technology that can fit in a backpack or even our pockets.”

Thanks to the support of alumni and donors, the first stop for UW Election Eye 2012 is South Carolina, where the Republican Party primary field makes a crucial stop after contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Domke, four students, and two faculty will spend the week in South Carolina leading to the state’s Jan. 21 primary. They will post regular content to the blog and Tweet about the goings-on. South Carolina has selected the eventual winner of the Republican Party primary every year since its primary began in 1980, so it promises to be compelling.

The UWCOM team will be joined by Departmental alumnus David Horsey, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist who recently left the Seattle P-I to take a position with latimes.com.