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The Knoxville blogosphere hits its stride
Posted By katie allison granju
As home to the most famous blog on the planet, Knoxville can arguably lay claim to being the biggest little blogging city in the United States. In fact we’ve had a thriving online community ever since Al Gore first invented the internet, but our online conversation has really matured lately.
I myself have been blogging at my personal blog for more than five years, and have been participating actively at Knox Blab for three years. I was a member of the late, great K2K before that, and I belong to at least four hyperlocal listservs focused on Knoxville’s Downtown-area neighborhoods.
I regularly read dozens of local blogs and bloggers. I also work in a newsroom.
As a result of all this, I have a relatively good sense of what’s going on in Knoxville’s online communities, and I totally agree with Jack Lail’s assessment of the role blogs (and online forums) played in the Knox County Super Tuesday voter revolt. Their role was absolutely pivotal.
In the past year or so, Knoxville’s blogosphere has really come into its own. There is now a freewheeling, open, informed communication taking place every day among a rapidly growing menu of local bloggers, creating a rich and important dialogue among Knoxvillians. In fact, I’ve never seen such a lively political conversation taking place across so many sub-communities in Knoxville.
This conversation extends beyond bloggers themselves, and even past the thousands of people who now read local blogs every day. It’s seeped out into the community at large - into political coverage by the “mainstream media” (which has gotten more hard-hitting and appropriately aggressive in the past year or two), and onto front porches and over backyard BBQ grills and into party chatter.
Knoxvillians are talking about their community, their government(s), their politics, and their civic outrage in a whole new way.
Blogs and bloggers deserve a great deal of the credit for this. And as Martha would say: it’s a Good Thing.
Feb 17th, 2008
Katie,
I agree. I believe the local blogs have provided the “missing link” that was needed to tie a public, which was often less informed and less focused than even it desired to be, with a local media that was time and space limited and struggling for an effective focus. The bloggers, while lacking the resources of the media, have provided critical bits of information in real time, and have helped the media and the public focus quickly on key issues. All in all, it’s looking like a fairly healthy trend.
Joe Hultquist