I’ve spent part of today setting up a local blog, focusing upon the small college town I live within.
Many of the things I find myself wanting to post to a blog are about local events, local history, small-town politics, and mundane happenings around where I live. Those don’t seem to fit here, but I don’t see too many other folks covering those topics.
Living in Delaware, about an hour north of Baltimore and an hour south of Philadelphia, the major news media doesn’t have the State on their radar. There is one Philly channel with a satellite office in Wilmington, but news reports about the area are meager at best and more commonly nonexistent.
There is one state-wide newspaper, but it focuses more upon Wilmington and Dover than the little town between them. A weekly paper provides some interesting news but often gets scooped by the paper written by University of Delaware students, published twice a week during the school year, and once a week during winter and summer sessions.
While the school newspaper can be fun and informative, the editors and writers know their audience is the university’s student body, and they rarely write in detail about issues that don’t involve students.
Being involved in forums on the web, I often have meaningful conversations online with people worldwide. I look forward to viewing blogs from folks that I know from across the country and on the other side of the Atlantic. I’m hoping that my new local blog will allow me to reach out to the folks across the street and around the block. And I’m hoping that I can get some other folks who live in the community to become part of my local online community.
One of the most interesting sites that I’ve come across online published oral histories from the town where my mother grew up. One of the interviewed folks was an elementary school teacher who my mother learned from when she was small. Histories like that are one of the things that I’d like to pursue on my new site.
It’s fun seeing mentions of posts from here on blogs from California or trackbacks from Japan. I’m hoping that it will be as fun to run into someone on Mainstreet and have them come up to me and say, “Hey, you’re the guy who writes that site.”
That’s the magic of the web, isn’it? I’ve been living in California for a year and I am now back to France, 6000 miles away from San Diego. I thought my return here will disturb everything but no, thanks to the Internet, it’s almost the same. I am still on forums, reading the same blogs, the same news sites, talking with the same people etc.
I agree that Internet is a wonderful way to meet new people from all around the world, who could have imagine 10 years ago that you would be able to meet people from Columbia while staying in front of your computer in Japan?
The world is just getting smaller.
It is smaller, and it’s larger. There are more people to meet, and more conversations that we can have with people who share common interests with us. Magical, indeed.
Sometimes those folks are a block away, and sometimes they are a continent away.
I’d love to have a read of your new blog, Bill. You haven’t linked to it though. 🙂
I haven’t linked to it yet, because I wanted to get a little more work done on it. But, if you’re interested, it’s here
This is a great idea! It’d be a great local business idea – my husband is about to open a State Farm insurance franchise. Good way to drive traffic to the site, and what fun!