Kojo Nnamdi: Blogging The Blizzard

Laurel Connections was part of a panel of three community bloggers today on Kojo Nnamdi's show on WAMU - 88.5 FM.   

A Podcast of the show should be available soon.

My goal on the show was to explain how web 2.0 tools can help us grow closer together as a community.   

The snow storm provided an excellent example of how our local government, our local newspaper and our community collaborated using web sites, blogs, photo sharing sites, listservs and old fashioned can-do spirit to keep each other informed and safe.

Increasing social capital and social cohesion via web 2.0 tools is an answer to Robert Putnam's challenge in "Bowling Alone."  I believe it's one of the ways that we will recreate stronger communities in the Internet Age.  

Major media cover national news with thousands of reporters.  Big city newspapers and electronic media cover metro stories with a few dozen reporters.  However, not everything that is most important to our lives happens on Capital Hill or in the West Wing.

In a crisis, the most important thing to know might be what is happening right now on the next block.  Major newspapers, TV and radio stations cannot cover our neighborhood.  Web 2.0 tools like blogs, Twitter, listservs and Facebook give us the tools we need to inform ourselves.  Information we need to stay safe, stay warm and to help one another.  Web 2.0 tools support  our first ammendment freedom in its purest form.  

Blogs and listservs will never replace great community newspapers like the Laurel Leader.   However local blogs and community newspapers can cooperate and serve the community better than either could alone.

Sometimes knowing where to borrow a shovel when your car is snowed under, or who has a warm cup of coffee when your power is out can be the most important thing in the world.

Kudos Laurel Leader

Laurel Leader's Editor, Melanie Dzwonchyk, has continued her unflagging support of digital publishing to keep us informed during the storm.  Melanie has heroically filed online stories during the teeth of the storm proving that local journalism doesn’t need ink and paper to serve our community. 

The Leader has published early and online this week.  You can read the Leader’s latest snow story here.  Kudos to Melanie and her team at the Leader.

It's too bad the Leader’s publishers refuse to create a professional website for our much beloved Laurel Leader.  We are left with their absolutely horrible “explore howard dot com” website.  

The fact that the “explore howard dot com” loses the brand identity provided by the Laurel Leader is sad enough.  However, the technology that their site runs on must have been first deployed by Gutenberg himself.   There seems to be simply no commitment to digital publishing by this publisher. It appears to be only an afterthought and is certainly not being worked as an emerging profit center.

I understand that community newspapers are losing money.  But it's a damn shame that the people running Patuxent Publishing do not embrace the web and dedicate their time and energies to improving their digital editions.  If there is any way to stop hemorrhaging money, the tourniquet must be built from their digital product.

Community news is vitally important to every small town in America.  I have dozens of sources for national news.  There are thousands of reporters in DC covering the federal government.  But on a good day, we only have a precious few reporters like Gwendolyn Glenn and Melanie Dzwonchyk to tell us what is happening in our own back yard.  

Come on Patuxent Publishing please give us a real community news website for the Laurel Leader.  A website that lives at laurelleader.com and a website that carries a local brand and logo that we can identify with. 

 

Laurel Leader Barely Gets The Story

The Laurel Leader's web-only story about Laurel City Council member Mike Sarich's ethics case left me barely informed this week. Their headline says, "Ethics panel clears Sarich — but barely." Unfortunately, the Leader never tells me that the panel decided unanimously in Sarich's favor. In other words, he was found innocent of committing any ethics violation. Not one member of the five person panel voted for finding a violation.

How does a unanimous decision rate a barely? Woman found pregnant, but barely ... makes about as much sense. Guilt or innocence, pregnant or not, these conditions demand a yes or no vote. It is not fair or even ethical to vote for one side but then turn around and call it the other.

I'm not taking sides on this case. I agree with the Laurel Ethics Commission that the rules on soliciting non-profits needs to be rewritten, both in Laurel and in Prince Georges County. The rules that allow our elected officials to act as bag-men for developer dollars has got to be stopped. If developers want to give money to local organizations, let them do it all by themselves.

The Mayor was doing his duty as chief executive officer of the city in bringing the case to the commission. But as far as the Sarich case is concerned, the allegation was made, the evidence was weighed and the panel voted. No ethics violation was found. The process worked.

I hope the Laurel Leader does the ethical thing and they fix their story in time for next Thursday's print edition.

Your comments are always welcome. Click the comments link below to post your opinion on this issue.

-rick

Update 5/5/2008. The Leader changed the story on their website today. The comments to this post are flying furiously. The Sarich effect has returned. Anonymous is even back! See the comments section for the complete discussion. - grw