Neighborhood Blogs, City Club, CD identity? report

By joanna
(2 votes) (report abuse)
The forum discussion centered around the personal time commitment and differing business models that exist within the blogger group of presenters and the future goals of each. Except for Corey from Ballard who envisions replacing the mainstream media, the bloggers described their sites as complementing neighborhood and city newspapers and their future goals as becoming more effective in their neighborhoods and helping to empower others. There was no mention regarding the effect of demographics and size of area covered on the business models, just as there was no in-depth discussion on the effect on community communication. It was clear that a good portion of each community participated in and valued their blog, but the articulation of why and the positive and possible negative affects on the community was fuzzy. The forum successfully presented the personalities of the bloggers and who they are as individuals.

Hopefully, this report is not being too negatively affected by a disheartening experience during the reception that began at 5:30 P.M. I met and spoke with one of the City Club organizers who relegated the Central District to being the same as Rainier Valley. A polite geography lesson appeared to be in order. This was especially disturbing since he was aware of Madison Valley as a distinct neighborhood and is working with them on rebranding and is aware of the Montlake, Eastlake, Capital Hill and almost all other neighborhoods, but was at a complete loss regarding the Central District.

Fortunately, during the presentation Amber Cambell described The Rainier Valley Post as serving an area south of I-90. Perhaps that should have been relief enough, but the earlier conversation bothered me throughout the presentation. Scott of the Central District News could have significantly contributed to the discussion in several areas, and I was sorry he wasn't part of the panel. Maybe that was his decision.

I did call the City Club this morning to express hope that future neighborhood organizers are made aware of the Central District. This incident seems to somewhat feed into the CD News discussions regarding the Central District not being uniformly depicted on maps and areas of it often being renamed by various interests.

I had to leave just before the last audience question.

Keep up the good work, Scott.
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posted on Fri, Sep 05, 2008 03:08 PM
last updated on Sat, Sep 06, 2008 10:30 AM
Thanks for the Report Joanna bykt2 months ago (0 votes) (report abuse) (reply)
I will admit when I saw that Monica Guzman was involved I totally tuned out. She is one of hte most insipid bloggers of a bunch of insipid and uninteresting blogging that goes out on the PI. Add City Club into the mix and one wonders if its just an effort to analyze and disect a grassroots phenomenon. For whom are they doing that?

It's like the internet in general. The original creation was people, largely in university settings, using it as a means to share and collaborate. It was not even set up to be secure. I used to do statistical analysis and be involved in list serves and download number crunching code in the early days.

It was not a big business thing. It was not pushing 'stuff' at us. Today the good stuff has a stated purpose and is collaborative and self correcting. People participate and collaborate for a reason, it helps us. Well most people I will exclude the trolls -- but that is self correcting in a active online community.
CD vs. Rainier Valley byJadeEJF2 months ago (0 votes) (report abuse) (reply)
It bugged me too, that they lumped the CD and Rainier Valley together- I'm not even from there (live in Fremont), and have only been here a year and a half, but even I know the difference (and have friends who live in each). Anyway, thanks for bringing that up!
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