Welcome to the Digital Edge
Through the keen eye of Southern Rants, we find a neoblogger from Brooklyn who discovered all the keys to the blogosphere in the flash of a day. His account is fascinating, and illustrates the importance and potential of blogging...
Excerpt:
I spent 15 minutes setting up a 90-day trial Weblog account, then devoted the next few days to developing the site. I blogged a mugging half a block from my apartment, and uploaded a video still of my kid playing at the corner playground (is that renovation project still out to bid?). I found some interesting neighborhood people to profile, including a cartoonist, a columnist for The Onion, a gourmet pickle entrepreneur and some “post-punk” vegetarian cooks who produce a public-access TV show out of their apartment.
Within 24 hours, my neighbor Frank Lynch had already found and blogged about my site: “Why wait for your precinct sergeant to set up a blotter?” he wrote. “It's time for a shout out to our neighborhood blog … If you think about it, this is the potential of the Internet: bringing information you can't get in print right to your door.”
Whoa. Was he reading my mind?
Frank’s comment evoked the opportunity - and challenge - that will confront traditional news publishers that want to tackle hyper-local media. Because it’s so already simple to publish and publicize, it will be difficult for newspapers to get behind this force already in motion, though some have made important strides in the right direction. Newspaper Web sites published by Advance.net, the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record and others are actively adding blogs and soliciting reader contributions.
You should read it for yourself, as there is much more, and it is wondrously and copiously hyperlinked.
