Express-Times version of Nazareth Day?

The Express-Times had numerous articles about and relating to the Nazareth area today. From pharmacies closing to the Lenape Indians to wrestling coaches to downtown development and then to the world wide web, there was plenty to read about our community.

From the web was an article on two blogs whose authors are both borough residents, Bernie O'Hare and myself.

To JD Malone and the Express-Times, I have to begin by thanking them for the article and recognition that comes with it (read the article here).

The article spoke to the fact that two years ago there were no blogs in the Valley and now there are thirty or more with two prime examples being Lehigh Valley Ramblings and NewsOverCoffee, both originated from the borough of Nazareth and each taking decidedly different approaches.

I had a ranging conversation with JD Malone on Friday afternoon. Over about two hours we spoke about everything related to the site from the conceptual to the concrete minutiae. From that he had to edit, and anyone that knows me, knows I can talk, so he had his work cut out for him.

One aspect that he couldn't really get into is the discussion regarding blogs in general. I personally don't like people referring to the site as a blog, but I've resigned myself to the fact that I can't fight it and explaining I have a "hyper-local community web site" is a mouthful. The reason for my displeasure is the notion that blogs are simply vanity sites written by a person about the person for the person's personal pleasure/adoration. Malone references this in the article, but I'd like to take a moment or two to discuss it in more depth.

A blog is really nothing more than an online publishing tool that allows one to have a web site without significant coding or programming. The first blogs appeared in 1997 (according to CNET News) and overtime came to meet a roughly agreed upon definition (a history of blogs is available here from Wikipedia). This past January, Placeblogger.com launched. The site is about a specific type of blog, one that I can relate NewsOverCoffee to. The site notes:

Placeblogs are sometimes called "hyperlocal sites" because some of them focus on news events and items that cover a particular neighborhood in great detail -- and in particular, places that might be too physically small or sparsely populated to attract much traditional media coverage. Because of this, many people have associated them with the term "citizen journalism," or journalism done by non-journalists.

Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone. They're about the lived experience of a place.

One of the founders of Placeblogger is Lisa Williams who is known for her site H20town about Watertown, MA. While trying to find my place in cyber-space last fall, I corresponded with Williams and found her referencing Tim Lindgren as the originator of the term placeblog. I then tracked Tim down. He is a professor at Boston College, and he explained to me that he used the term in an academic paper, but that he got it from the Ecotone Bloggers. This group used the term as it related to personal essay about a place, not civic or political writing that one would find more toward the journalistic side of the writing spectrum. This took place between 2003 and 2005 if my notes are trustworthy.

In 2005, as Malone notes, I tried to start my site and derive its content from local groups and organizations. In short, they didn't get it. In hindsight, I probably didn't articulate well enough why aggregating content was important for both the groups and the people of the community, but it did get me to re-evaluate what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.

I relaunched in March of 2006 and was helped along by a series of controversial community issues that spread word of the site. First was the new government center plan, then the teachers' possible strike, the new MS, the school district budget/tax hike, and the skate park.

Throughout the focus has been on the place, Nazareth, and as such a bona-fide placeblog has been formed.

In contrast, Bernie's site is about place (Northampton County plus Nazareth where he lives), but more about politics and government. County level politics is often overlooked/ignored and his site fills a void by providing valuable information.

The two sites are also very different in respect to the discourse as Malone also notes.

From the beginning, I've been concerned about the comments devolving into flaming that occurs on many forums and ultimately ruins the site. At first it was fairly easy to manage because the readership was small and the people bought in to what I was trying to accomplish. There were many instances when a reader would call foul in the comments when someone attacked the person instead of the argument being made. Over time, however, as the site grew and certain topics became a passion for some readers it was harder to manage. At the same time (this past spring) a movement was taking place in regard to civil standards online (read about it here). I followed it closely and decided that I could have a set of standards based on the online discussion and modified to meet my needs (read them here) and to add teeth to them, require registration of comments, but still provide for anonymity.

It affected a small but important group of people, those who chose to comment. The people that comment are often considered 'the voice of the community', and it is sometimes forgotten that they simply reflect their own opinion, as do I on occasion. In the summer the readership is between 300 and 400 readers daily, while during the school year it is between 400 and 500. When you consider 30 comments on a post, there are probably about seven to ten people expressing an opinion or adding insight. This is a small percentage of readers, but again important, because you want the conversation, but I also wanted that conversation to be constructive and beneficial or the readers will stop reading.

It was a tough call and I struggled with exactly how to do it. In the end some disagreed with my approach, but from a management and responsibility standpoint, I thought then and remain convinced it was the right thing to do.

In the end, the blog system allows each and everyone of us to publish content. We each do some things the same and we do some things differently. There is good and bad that must be weighed based on what we want out of the site, but the options and possibilities available as a result of the tool yield a great benefit to the community.

Again my thanks to JD Malone, the Express-Times, Bernie O'Hare, all the other bloggers in the Valley and elsewhere, and mostly to the people who send me ideas for topics, read, comment, and tell their friends about NewsOverCoffee. It has been a tremendous experience and I've very much enjoyed communicating online in public, by email, and in person with so many people.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't express my thanks to Brad Moulton who found the site and offered to forward his notes from School Board Meetings. I think it was three months or more before we actually met face-to-face. His contributions have been invaluable and I'd encourage anyone who regularly attends meetings to forward your notes to share with everyone else. I can attribute them to you or post them anonymously, it is your decision. And don't forget, if you're reading, let me know what and if it was any good, I'll add it to the book club section (thanks also to the Library's Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla for her book reviews).

Thanks Again!