Bloggers – The new ingredient of civic discourse - By Roldo Bartimole

[Kolesar]

Roldo has long been a critique of Cle establishment. He begins this essay with a story on Mayor Jackson. He has an interesting opinion on the bloggers at the end, which I have excerpted. Note the list of blogs that I appended.


http://www.coolcleveland.com/index.php/Main/RoldoLinkBloggers

The mainstream media, particularly newspapers, are nervous about bloggers and the internet. (Newspapers also have bloggers but they have to behave themselves, unlike those who can freelance blog.) Newspaper readers have been declining and the avalanche of new outlets of news and its byproducts have cut into their power and profit. There is worry, thus, that newspapers face decline and demise.

I don’t believe that. Bloggers surely depend heavily on the MSM for their fodder. There’s little independent journalistic coverage in these blogs. Much of the local content, no matter how titillating or truthful, rests on reaction to what is in the Plain Dealer here. After all, the PD has some 400 editorial employees. No bloggers alone or in combination can match or ignore that workforce or the shoe-leather aspect of MSM journalism.

That’s why the Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer were subjects I could not ignore when I was writing my newsletter, Point of View.

Bloggers, too, don’t ignore mainstream media. However, there are enough of them to alter MSM, I think for the better. More and more I think they will have to be paid attention to by the MSM.

Moreover, the bloggers have made it necessary for community institutions to pay attention. It’s grassroots nature feeds into the community a public opinion quality that will need to be addressed.

More power to them.

There are numerous sites to visit, especially when one goes beyond the local blogs. Some of the local sites I visit in addition to those mentioned include Have Coffee Will Write, MB Matthews: Street Smarts (insightful comment by a Cleveland schoolteacher), Hypothetically Speaking, Working with Words, and Buckeye Politics.

...end excerpt...

http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/
http://www.democracyguy.com/
http://www.havecoffeewillwrite.com/
http://mbmatthews.blogspot.com/
http://www.loganselm.blogspot.com/
http://workingwithwords.blogspot.com/
http://www.buckeyepolitics.net/