Saturday, April 30, 2005 :::
TD Discovers Blogs (Again)
The Richmond Times-Dispatch is notorious for lagging behind the latest trends, innovations and information (this is Richmond, after all). Today, on page 1, above the fold, the TD informs the world about those strange things called blogs.
It's not a terribly good article, seeing that its focus seems to be largely on bloggers found in an around VCU. Only obliquely does the article mention one of the most effective blogs in town, Save Richmond. This blog's creators have waged a sometimes solitary and yet highly effective campaign exposing the naked emperor that is the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation. Agree or disagree with their conclusions, the site's authors have provided an invaluable public service (one that even the TD has been forced to admit).
Nor does the article mention another of the city's most valuable sites, RiverCity Rapids. Snoopy and Wonder Woman produce a lot of interesting and valuable commentary on local matters. But TD readers will never know it.
And how could they ignore the 800 pound gorilla of local blogs, Bacon's Rebellion?
Sure, I know, there are umpteen hundred blogs in and around Richmond. There's no possible way to cover even a tiny portion of them in a newspaper article.
But I suggest that the next time the news staff is given an assignment to write on blogs, they check with the folks on the op-ed page staff. Some, like Bart Hinkle, could point the newsies in far more interesting and useful directions.
Of course by the time that happens, blogs will be as cutting-edge as rotary phones. But then again, this is Richmond. And those phones were so nice.
::: posted by Norman Leahy at 4/30/2005
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