Ron Fournier, political writer for the Associated Press, put an article on the newswires on Christmas Eve summing up a trend over the past few years: Internet Fosters Local Political Movements. Sound like a familiar premise? The examples he cites include MoveOn, Meetup, and BlogsforBush.com. Not sure what prompted the article, but there’s no time like the present to note an ongoing trend I suppose.
Meanwhile, I just blogged over at PDF about eBlock, a service that provides neighborhood-level websites: eBlock addresses the ‘bowling alone’ problem.
All politics, still local
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One response to “All politics, still local”
Good points.
Some thoughts:
1. Blogs have become famous–in the msm–because of high profile, “sexy” issues and events, from RatherGate to the Tsunami. But a point I make in the book I’m writing about political blogging (BLOGWARS, Oxford University Press, 2006) is that blogging will grow through bloggers who add local value to the blogging experience. They blog about City Hall, potholes, and Aldermen on the take–and people want to know about those topics as much as they want to hear about Iraq or the Supreme Court.
I think of folks like:
Bill Callahan–Callahan’s Cleveland Diary (cleveland_diary.blogspot.com)
Christopher Frankonis (a.k.a. The One True b!X)–Portland Communique (communique.portland.or.us)
2. The above said, All political blogging is national–even international in the technical sense: What is posted on an “Iowa” blog need not stay in Iowa; it is available to interested, Internet-connected parties in Beijing and Timbuktu. A politician, say, running for President, can’t speak to a “local” blog and not expect everyone else to listen in.