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Friday, February 3, 2012

Will the political season revive Plainfield's blogosphere?


A 'map' of the political blogosphere from Crooked Timbers blog.

Attentive Plainfield Today readers will have noticed that a lot of wind (or was it hot air) has gone out of the sails of Plainfield's blogosphere since the November general elections.

Time was Plainfield held its head high among New Jersey communities with more than 20 active bloggers. Not so today.

The scene seems to have sorted itself down into several groups --

  • Daily bloggers include Bernice, Olddoc, Maria and yours truly;

  • Frequent bloggers include Jackie, Plainfield Sports News and Councilors Mapp, Storch and Williams;

  • Infrequent bloggers include Board of Ed President Renata Hernandez's personal blog and Plainfield student Vashon Hill;

  • An apparent quitter -- education policy blogger Dr. E=MC², who has disappeared altogether in recent days and doesn't respond to emails; and

  • The Rest.
Olddoc has asked from time to time why I don't clean out the list that appears daily on the CLIPS post. Well, it's partly from inertia and partly from a hope that something will spark our capable writers, and partly from the knowledge that it took some effort to organize the roster and keeping it going only costs a few electrons (which are free on Blogger).

But now the pot is beginning to simmer, as both Bernice (here) and Olddoc (here) point out today.

Plainfield has many eager readers, who are also eager to share their opinions and engage in conversations with each other through the comments sections on each blog. But developing a steady audience requires developing a steady blogging habit. It doesn't have to be daily, but it should be predictable -- like once a week. And a topic area or a point of view that are distinctive.

So, will Plainfield's pondering class get a second wind and kick back into action?

Or should I prune?

Let me know via the poll in the right hand column on the CLIPS blog (here), which I will leave up for a week.

 

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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1 comments:

Rebecca Williams said...

Hi, Dan,

I'm glad you focused on this today--I think that the blog roll should stay as it is for the time being. Maybe your call for these former bloggers to begin posting again will inspire some to do so. I wish I could blog more often, as there is certainly enough going on in our city to post about. I just find that I don't have a great deal of time to do so--in addition to the two blogs I try to devote time to (council thoughts and confessions), I maintain several others (written for different audiences). I agree, though, that I miss the issue-oriented blogs. Blogging is a lot of work--that, plus, ennui, enervation, dispiritedness, and demoralization, might be contributing factors as well.

Rebecca