Over at Sticks of Fire, Tommy talks about David Banghart moving from one neighborhood to another within Tampa and how he's leaving one blog for another. David ran the popular and informative Seminole Heights blog, but now he'll be posting at the Word from Lutz.
Somehow I missed the St. Pete Times article that profiled David and the Seminole Heights blog. Tommy quotes a bit of it, but I just want to highlight this part:
Before his blog, residents of Old Seminole Heights, South Seminole Heights and Southeast Seminole Heights communicated through e-mail and phone chains mostly within their neighborhoods. Now, attendance is higher at events because everyone in the area sees the same fliers posted on the blog. “You post it on the blog, you’re going to get a turnout,” said Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association president Randy Baron. “I think it’s an excellent place for people to find out about things. It’s a one-stop shop.” And readers aren’t just residents. The media and city officials regularly check blogs for neighborhood news.Earlier this week I wrote why we'll always need journalists. In response, Chris Thilk pointed out the symbiotic nature of the blogger/media relationship that should exist.Shannon Edge, the city’s director of neighborhood and community relations, is a regular blog visitor. It’s a great gauge for what residents care about and alerts her to neighborhood issues, she said. She often verifies information posted anonymously on the blog with association presidents in order to pass it along to city officials.
But those professionals will need to know where to turn to fill in their own knowledge gaps as well. That's because the citizenry, the ones who live in the communities or who have a niche interest, are going to be powerful within that niche. Mainstream media outlets simply don't have the resources to get as minutely specific as blogging allows for. So not only is Josh smart for knowing what he doesn't know and reaching out for input, so to should reporters learn to know what they don't know and search for those who do....This is exactly the type of thing we see with blogs like Seminole Heights. Now if only every neighborhood had a Tommy, David or Joey we'd be all set.....But niche bloggers have the time and the passion to cover topics or angles that big news organizations just can't because the return on investment is too low or even non-existent.
Visitor Comments
That is a great idea, neighborhood blogs. My parents are members of a homeowner's association back in Nashville, and hate getting a ton of e-mails and newsletters. They always have questions about what's going on in their neigborhood. Do you know what the overhead would be for starting up such a blog that their neighborhood to use?
Posted by: Virginia | October 19, 2006 12:32 PM
Neighborhood blogs as any other community blogs create an additional opportunity to for sharing news that would not be covered by mass media.
I think these kinds of blogs may and do build sense of community and it is both positive and negative.
On positive side it adds more communication to life of people (and give them possibility to be the first to tell the story) and help them to be aware of what is going on around in their community.
But: 1) They may harm these little communities in case if something that should not be discussed in public will appear on blog. Best neighbors may become enemies. And it would not be longer just between them, but it may split the whole community.
2) These blogs are not protected from entering them from outside. As it is not face-to-face communication and it allows to form any image, any identity, people from outside (as well as from inside) of community may use these blogs for reaching their goals.
3) They are open to advertisers… unless someone cuts all ads messages (and that may take a lot of time), it sooner or later becomes full of junk messages. I used to be responsible for keeping message board clean and took a lot of time to go through all the messages and delete ads, promotional information, etc.
4) As source of information it is close to mass media, but in opposite to mass media, blogs are more like individual communication (you may response, you may initiate dialogue, etc). Being more like individual communication information in blogs may have greater effect on people, than information from mass media. Openness of blog can make them very valuable tool for advertisers, markerter, “black” pr people, etc.
To maintain neighborhood blog may take a lot of time and passion of community in order to keep it an informative tool rather then tool of affection.
Posted by: kateeJRMC | October 19, 2006 8:29 PM