We here are blessed, journalistically speaking

For the moment, we in Nevada County are indeed fortunate. We have:

• Two local newspapers, The Union and the Nevada City Advocate;
  
• One former newspaper editor, Jeff Pelline, since repurposed to great effect;
  
• One forum hosting constructive community dialogue, the chez Pelline comments;
  
• One progressive news site, Yubanet;
  
• Citizen journalism from Sierra Voices host Don Pelton and occasionally me;
• Back-fence coverage from Dixie and dcain;
  
• One kitchen-sink local aggregator, Nevada County Voices;
• One nexus of local contrarian commentary, the Steele-Rebane-CABPRO axis;
• Two radio stations, KNCO and KVMR;
• The public-figure vanguard dipping a toe into constructive online community dialogue - Sierra College trustee Aaron Klein and Clerk-Recorder candidate Barry Pruett;


• The prospect of even more riches - looking out, I see reps from the Mountain Messenger and Nevada City Free Press teetering at the edge of the pool. (Jump! Jump!)
  

And we have no shortage of news to cover, since our public-figure cultural spectrum ranges from MayorReinette Senum and APPLE-NC to the Meckler-headed Tea Party Patriots and aforementioned CABPRO folks.


It's enough to make your head spin.

p.s. what did I miss?

Small town journalism, etc

This is interesting - Sharon Dunwoody explains and compares small vs. large community newspaper coverage of the same story.

I think in the past I have been rather naive.

( Note to fellow techno-luddites: the cognoscenti would put a mini-post like this into a TumbleLog on their sidebar, or just tag it with del.icio.us. )


But since this is growing into more than a mini-post, something else I've been meaning to put up:

Someone recently asked my thoughts on "the strange bedfellows that are being created to promote blogging vs. MSM"; I answered:

In brief, to the extent it's a "vs.": it's exactly akin to the strange bedfellows (students and imams) that joined together to overthrow the Shah of Iran.

It didn't turn out so well for the students.

The trick is to avoid the "vs.", to create a chimaera that takes advantage of the strengths of both. This would require trust - and more importantly, behavior to earn that trust - from both.

(I believe we were both using "bloggers" as shorthand for "people who aren't journalists by training, who have blogs and may do some citizen journalism [and who criticize newspaper coverage...]")