April 18, 2005

Blogging the Tennessee Legislature's Ethics Debate

Today's Tennessean article on legislative ethics reform quotes local blogger Matthew White.

Matthew White is a Nashville-based blogger behind www.southendgrounds.com, a political blog with a baseball theme. He's been following the ethics debate at the statehouse like a catcher watches a pop fly. The way he reads the legislation, lawmakers' ethics efforts are more show than substance.

"Given the leadership's past, they will run to the water's edge and stop," he said. They will do "just enough to get some good PR."

"I think if anything happens, it will happen because of public pressure," White said, noting that bloggers, government watchdog groups and voters statewide had been "making calls to the legislators."

As I said the other day, The Tennessean appears to be waking up to the blogosphere. That's nothing but good news - for bloggers of course but also for readers of The Tennessean, who now will be exposed to a larger and more varied set of voices on important public policy issues.