We Dream Big

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April 25, 2005

We Dream Big

Bill Hobbs: "If my dream for the Tennessee blogosphere [...] were realized, there would be a slew of Tennessee bloggers reporting and commentating on every single niche of state government, local government, and the news media. Every town - your town - would have a local blogger who intensively covers local government."

This is very similar to my own dream for the Tennessee blogosphere. This blog was created to be part of a decentralized network that doesn't exist (yet*). My general plan is to cover Chattanooga and Hamilton County first; Tennessee government second (but, in a pattern that I possibly incorrectly label "geographically concentric," the first tier of focus would be the local delegation (House districts 26-31 and Senate districts 10-11), followed by all others); then national government (in keeping with the pattern, primary focus goes to the TN congressional delegation, and judiciary and administrative matters that pertain to our region); and, finally, the rare post on international affairs.

Imagine if there were a Memphis blog, a Jackson blog, a Kingsport blog, a Lawrenceburg blog, a Bristol blog, heck, even a Gruetli-Laager blog, etc., all doing the same thing. Each city and town would enjoy full blog-style coverage of its local civic matters, and state coverage would thereby be complete via the aggregate.

The larger cities' civic blogs would likely need several authors each, given the sheer volume of material there is to cover, uncover, and slather with snark. They'd also need sponsorship, revenue, you know, the grease that makes the wheels turn. (Even though this is the Volunteer State, and I'm happy to have volunteered my effort thus far, in order to have the time that is needed to attend meetings, research stories, do interviews, and in general totally spank our local MSM outlets, the practical reality is that "alternative and renewable" sources of income would necessarily be sought.) Conversations have indeed begun on the subject of a bigger, faster, better civic blog for Chattanooga.

I appreciate your staying linked while the details are being determined.

(*One could effectively argue that some "nodes" exist in exemplary blogs like South Knox Bubba and NashvilleFiles. I don't want to sound like I'm not giving credit where it's due, but purely civic blogs like this one wants to be (and, sadly, isn't yet) are not known to exist anywhere in the state. I also realize that there's an inherent risk in publishing this post that someone will beat me (and Chattanooga) to the punch, as the saying goes, but the benefit to the citizens outweighs any pride in throwing the first one.)

UPDATE: it looks like Nashville suddenly has a blog with a paid blogger (HT: Blake | More here). Dang, the sucker-punch came before I published this, even. But that one belongs to corporate teevee news and is not specifically a civics blog, so I think we can duck it and hit back, hard. And I'm through with the violent metaphor.

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