God knows I've spent an awful lot of time writing about and talking about community weblogs (aka, 'hood blogs) over the past several years -- particularly since the combined forces of John Murden, Ross Catrow and a spasm of local media inertia created perfect conditions for an explosion of hyper-local news coverage online.
Murden, who puts most of his energy into teaching elementary school and publishing Church Hill People's News (and maintains a slimmer personal blog on the side), just posted a link to a piece by NPR's On the Media that focuses on the rise of online journalism (and the death of the Post-Intelligencer) in Seattle. Which is so much like Richmond it's not even funny. Okay, that's a stretch.
It's a timely piece, one I'll try to memorize by next Tuesday's Social Media Club of Richmond smackdown, the "New Media and the News" panel discussion. That's the panel discussion where I'll actually defend print media, and argue that the biggest mistake made in trying to leverage new technology may have been the entire process of staffing and building a whole new elephant. I fully recognize that objects in the rearview mirror may be closer than they appear, but whatever. Buy a ticket and come listen.
But before you do that, take a listen to the On the Media piece.
