Beverly Hills-based documentary filmmaker John Wellington Ennis already blogs for the Huffington Post. But via video message from founder Ariana Huffington, he was recently gifted with a major additional assignment: helping with on-the-ground coverage of the upcoming Republican and Democratic national conventions in Tampa Bay and Charlotte.

Ennis is one of eight winners of an OffTheBus sanctioned video competition launched in February that sought Ustream citizen journalists. The winners will be divided into teams of four, remotely trained and then sent to one of the two events, with travel, lodging and expenses reimbursed. Here’s Ennis’ winning entry:

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John Woestendiek writes today at Ohmidog.com that he was particularly proud of his three contributions to the site on Monday, which included a follow-up about a formerly homeless Los Angeles man and his three-legged pit bull Topaz. That is until he checked his website’s Google Analytics report for August 15.

Turns out the bulk of traffic to his site came via a celebrity keyword search that had nothing to do with any of his Monday items. And Woestendiek is none too thrilled about it all:

What drew most readers to Ohmidog! yesterday–676 of them–was a post, nearly 50 days old, about Jennifer Aniston getting her dog Norman’s name tatooed on her foot…

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