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Local blogging?
By Kirby Winfield | October 16, 2007
Apropos of nothing…Why isn’t there a single online de facto destination for folks to blog about their neighborhoods?
This is a troubling question for those of us who wish to simply share information about our ZIP Code or neighborhood with those who would find it useful. Certainly, for online media powers, it’s the $8.6B question. How does one find an e-home away from home where a) exposure is guaranteed; b) credibility is bestowed upon contributors simply via participation/acceptance; c) tools for digitization of local information are accessible; and, d) a community of active readers and fellow-travelers is present?
It’s Simple: no such place(s) exist.
Example: why can’t Google become the home for the blogs of those local opinion leaders we know so well?
Answer: because anyone who is passionate about their local area - enough to blog about it as a public service/ego sop/business tool/labor of love - is probably savvy enough to setup an online presence at a specific domain. Hence, a fragmentation of the best and most vibrant, up-to-date, valuable media for given micro-local areas.
But what if someone offered up a unifying principle? What if we woke up one day; we bloggers, readers, lurkers, pundits, crawlers - indeed, we netizens (yeah I know I busted Wired Style, I just dated myself, and I don’t care) - and there was a single metaphor (navigational, branded or otherwise) that we all embraced?
The other 90% would benefit greatly from, if nothing else, an indexed, dynamic database of homegrown writing and linking about topics of interest to local Web users.
Notice I say “topics of interest” - not “local topics”. I think one of the big misconceptions in local media today is that any one blogger can constrain oneself to topics within one’s area of residence.
I have been doing this for five days and the stuff I feel inclined to cover breaks down into the following categories, in order of desire:
Me and stuff that happens to me
Stuff I am thinking about
Stuff I like generally
Work (off limits)
My city
My neighborhood
Granted, the first three are simple indictments of my egocentricity (tell me you’re different), so let’s look at the last two. Is the reason I think “city” first because of my demographic state of life? I have to think so. I am still transitioning from a point where I strive for civic identity in the absence of a greater social or ethnic flag to wave, to a point where my flag is my personal life/stake in the ground.
[In other words, I am going from wearing the Mariners jersey to making my own t-shirt.]
For the grad students: When the ego drives the display of external identity, one’s thoughts and aspirations carry undue weight in the internal equation that results in the decision to communicate online to an unknown audience.
Simply put: it’s hard to write about the neighborhood community center when I’m worried about whether I’m making a partner.
However, once one matures or - less jingoistically - ages to the point where the ego has been sublimated by the passing of time and the practical necessities of family and community life, one is likely ready to blog incessantly about items of varying personal interest, due to the nascent interconnectivity of said items (i.e. “I am 40 and have 2 kids, therefore I am connected to larger civic and political conversations around schools, churches, youth sports,” etc.) and the vacuum - creative, self-actual, and other - that age and civic responsibility inevitably bring.
So, is it that blogging is about the person first, and the location second? In other words, is content inherently global (or, conversely, impossibly local)?
Topics: Blogging, Community, Content |
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 am
“The other 90% would benefit greatly from, if nothing else, an indexed, dynamic database of homegrown writing and linking about topics of interest to local Web users.”
I agree completely! So completely that we’ve been building exactly that at outside.in for the past year….
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:47 pm
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