On behalf of the NPI team, I’m excit­ed to announce that this week marks the begin­ning of a new chap­ter in the his­to­ry of The Advo­cate, our sec­ond old­est project and pri­ma­ry pub­li­ca­tion. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been devel­op­ing a plan to fresh­en up and strength­en The Advo­cate, and begin­ning today, we’re putting that plan into motion. The first thing we’ve done is to redec­o­rate a bit.

As you may have noticed, The Advo­cate looks dif­fer­ent. We’ve giv­en it a wider side­bar, an updat­ed blogroll, and a bold, beau­ti­ful new nameplate.

The pho­to in the name­plate depicts the Cas­cade Range in the morn­ing from Sun­rise, Mount Rainier. I had the good for­tune to enjoy this gor­geous view ear­li­er this month when I paid a vis­it to our state’s old­est nation­al park, and I’m delight­ed to be able to share it with all of you — our readers.

But this new look and feel is hard­ly the extent of the changes we have planned.

Begin­ning in a few days, you’ll be able to look for­ward to week­ly columns by NPI board mem­bers, who will take turns weigh­ing in on hot top­ics and trends we’re track­ing. You’ll also be intro­duced to a num­ber of new con­trib­u­tors, who will assist NPI staff in keep­ing an eye on the news, ana­lyz­ing leg­is­la­tion, research­ing the con­se­quences of bal­lot mea­sures, and pro­vid­ing live cov­er­age of impor­tant events.

And in just over a month, you’ll be treat­ed to almost non­stop cov­er­age of the 2012 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion live from Char­lotte, North Carolina.

The upcom­ing con­ven­tion in Char­lotte will be the third Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion to be cov­ered here on The Advo­cate, and the sec­ond to be cov­ered live. But it will be the first con­ven­tion that we will pri­mar­i­ly cov­er from the per­spec­tive of peo­ple who are there as delegates.

As many read­ers may recall, back in May, I myself was elect­ed as a del­e­gate for Barack Oba­ma from the 1st Con­gres­sion­al District.

When I ran for del­e­gate, I made a promise to a room full of com­mit­ted and devot­ed activists — a promise that I ful­ly intend to keep. As I said then:

I want to bring the con­ven­tion home to all of the peo­ple who can’t go. I want to be your eyes and ears in Char­lotte. Not after the fact – not after I get back – but while I’m there. If you send me to Char­lotte, I promise to live­blog the con­ven­tion in words, audio, and pic­tures each day, with in-depth cov­er­age of the speech­es and the goings-on.

Like many of you, I don’t much care for the shal­low “who’s win­ning, who’s los­ing today” style cov­er­age we get from the cor­po­rate media these days. What’s left of the media, anyway.

I want to pro­vide you with an unfil­tered, thought­ful per­spec­tive of what’s going on. This con­ven­tion is an incred­i­bly impor­tant event. It deserves to be well-covered.

After word of my promise got out, sev­er­al oth­er nation­al del­e­gates vol­un­teered to help us pro­vide high-cal­iber live cov­er­age. They are among the con­trib­u­tors you’ll be intro­duced to in the days to come. All of us at NPI are grate­ful to them for their will­ing­ness to help us bring the DNC home to the Pacif­ic Northwest.

We will also be cov­er­ing the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in August, though most­ly from here and not from Tam­pa. (If there are any Repub­li­can del­e­gates out there read­ing this who would be inter­est­ed in guest post­ing a cou­ple of times about their con­ven­tion expe­ri­ence, let us know).

We have many oth­er changes in the pipeline as well, but I’ll touch on those at a lat­er date, since they’re fur­ther off.

I want to end this post by extend­ing a heart­felt thank you to all of the peo­ple who have loy­al­ly sup­port­ed us over the years.

We hope you enjoy read­ing the new­ly rein­vig­o­rat­ed NPI Advocate.