Over at Save Richmond, Don Harrison provides his analysis of how various groups gained and lost ground as a result of this most recent historic election cycle. Harrison focuses on the national, state and local fronts, but I was most interested in his take on Richmond.
On the winners side of the column, Harrison pegs Style Weekly, RVANews, the Richmond Good Life, the local blogosphere and Jack (Goes Forth) as difference makers:
Style Weekly
Did the rest of the area’s establishment media see how Style covered the local political races?
Did they take notes? Not only did the scrappy weekly co-sponsor a
series of informative mayoral debates with the League of Women Voters,
it distinguished itself with updated election night coverage that went
beyond just the raw numbers. This is called journalism and civic
engagement, people. Isn’t it cool?
RVANews and The Richmond Good Life
Ross, Valerie and the fine folks at RVANews kept the electorate informed with live blogging of the Style
debates, online video clips for those who couldn’t make those events,
and informative (if often disregarded) candidate questionaires. For
a healthy Democracy, this kind of accessible, inclusive coverage is so
key that you wonder how we ever voted without it. No wonder RVANews is
turning out to be THE grassroots web source for Richmond culture and
politics while other news services with more money and resources are trying in vain to buy themselves some form of internet legitimacy. Good luck. Meanwhile, over at Richmond Good Life, webmaster Ed oversaw a superior and informative aggregate of local political news
that helped citizens get right to the meat of the Mayor’s race. I
enthusiastically bookmarked RGL the minute I found it and I now peruse
it nearly every day. It’s an invaluable area resource.
The Local Blogosphere
Elsewhere on the vast series of tubes, independent webbers such as SlantBlog, Buttermilk & Molasses, and J’s Notes (and we can’t forget our neighborhood community blogs)
helped to elevate the public discourse and provided not only strong
opinions but postings of campaign events and actual breaking political
news. Sure there were obvious partisan hacks that seemed to exist only
to parrot campaign talking points — but even those bloggers served a
purpose by encouraging hot debate on our local web.
Jack the Blogger
Horndog, man about town, drink-mixer and controversial observer —
Richmond’s more charismatic version of Joe the Plumber managed to take
a hedonistic worldview and make a sizable splash on the local political
scene as a would-be kingmaker. I don’t always agree with him, but I hope that Jack never “settles down.”
As for the losers, Harrison doesn't surprise when he pegs the Times-Dispatch's editorial page and Richmond's business community as coming up short:
The Metro Richmond “Business Community”
The chosen mayoral candidate of our richest county-dwelling Republicans
placed a distant third. The designated pick of Richmond’s developer
clique lost too. I won’t delude myself into thinking that either
force’s influence will be greatly diminished in the days to come, but I
think a signal was sent if anyone wants to see it: The City of Richmond should not serve as the exclusive erector set of the folks at the Commonwealth Club.
For too long, Richmond has believed that all its problems can be solved
from the top down by corporate leaders who, frankly, have been very
inconsistent, barely competent and exceedingly tone deaf in their
vision and their leadership. To borrow one national politician’s
winning slogan, it is time for a “change” and that is what Richmond
voters asked for on Tuesday. They certainly didn’t vote for the
“business community” — in whatever form — to maintain an exclusive grip
on civic matters at the expense of the rest of us.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch Editorial Page
Our least favorite Dittoheads — closed off in a rareified little world
where a regular left-of-center columnist is not welcome — not only showed us how out-of-touch they were with Richmond — and Virginia — voters during this election cycle, they left it up to pop music writer Melissa Ruggieri to cover minute-by-minute developments on election night. Um, what exactly are their two editorial page blogs for? Lazy and sad.
