aaawww...did us bloggers upset the little ole city of Salisbury?
It's said that "nature abhors a vacuum." In the case of Salisbury, since the local paper or TV stations aren't always the best source for news, something fills in the slack.
There's always been a "rumor mill" wherever you go, but in this era of widely available Internet and the opportunity to sign up for (or buy like I did) a domain name and join the "pajamas media", it's very possible for a blogger to have a larger circulation and disseminate information to a larger audience than the so-called "mainstream media" outlets.
Three of my fellow Delmarva bloggers became accepted members of the media this week as all three local media outlets featured them on their news. The gist of the stories was a focus on local resident Joe Albero, a man who's had repeated run-ins with several government entities. To those who aren't a fan of his efforts, I suppose the term for him would be "local gadfly." The really funny thing is that Albero doesn't have his own blog, generally he works with and comments to the Justice for All? blog (although he has commented here on monoblogue as well.)
I'm sure all three of these blogs have rapidly increased their readership over the course of this year (let alone the last few days), as has mine (I had a record number of hits yesterday.) Monoblogue is a little different than the other three, but I do cover a lot of the same ground. It would be interesting to know what the hit rate is for the "mainstream" outlets compared to the bloggers. While it's probably on a order of magnitude higher, I bet the gap is decreasing.
What struck me as funniest about the coverage was the Daily Times article, and particularly Mayor Tilghman's reaction to the bloggers, "If they care for a higher level of community discussion, then I recommend they become involved in the city of Salisbury."
Honestly, how does one become more involved with the city of Salisbury? Let's assume for the sake of argument that at least one of the above mentioned bloggers or correspondents attends each public meeting, and looks over all the agendas and such that is public information. To me, the next step would have to be either working for the city or running for office. There's only so many city positions that open up where an impact can be made, and you have to actually live in Salisbury to run for office (not to mention win an election.)
Once upon a time some wag said, "you can't fight City Hall." It becomes easy to ignore the wishes of the public when you know you have enough support from the voters to remain in the job term after term. But you can't ignore bloggers quite as easily when they present a compelling version of events that may not be what the mayor and others in city government like to hear. So far the efforts of the bloggers have brought to light the animal deaths at the zoo (as well as their polluting the Wicomico River), the permitless dumping at the wastewater treatment plant, irregularities in annexation and zoning approvals - that's just in Salisbury. Multiply that by 1,000 other large communities.
Maybe the best way to sum this up is if there weren't bloggers and commenters to the sites who really cared about the place they live, it would be that much more difficult to muster up the resources for necessary change. This is the second place I've moved to by choice, and the first one was paid for by someone else (college.) So I'm interested in doing my part to make it a better place to live; after all, I have a stake in the community now since my job depends a lot on the well-being of the Delmarva area.