BillHobbs.com is a frequently updated blog of original reporting and commentary by Bill Hobbs, a longtime Nashville journalist and media relations adviser. I am currently serving as communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, a job I began on Oct. 29, 2007.
Michael Silence has some thoughts about blogging in a perspective piece in the Sunday Knoxville News Sentinel reflecting on the recent BlogNashville conference.
Blog is a contraction for "Web log," an online diary with emphasis on immediacy, commentary and reader interaction. More concise, as Franklin, Tenn., blogger Bill Hobbs (www.billhobbs.com) said at the conference, "It's a Web site."
In Tennessee, there are some excellent examples of blogs. In addition to Hobbs, there's South Knox Bubba, www.southknoxbubba.net/skblog/; SayUncle, www.saysuncle.com; and Les Jones at www.lesjones.com.
Tennessee bloggers Hobbs, Blake Wylie of www.nashvillefiles.com/blog/ and Matthew White of www.southendgrounds.com recently played a vital role in exposing a move in the state General Assembly to remove the petition right of citizens to send a proposed wheel tax increase to the voters.
But there's also the personal side offered through blogs. Nashville blogger Busy Mom at www.busymom.net regularly draws numerous comments on her postings about everyday life. Many other bloggers either in Tennessee or with Tennessee connections can be found at a site handled by South Knox Bubba, http://southknoxbubba.net/rocky_top_brigade.htm.
As I've said on my blog before, which can be found at www.knoxnews.com, these blogs are simply a collection of voices.
Hobbs is right when he said at the conference there's no mystery to what blogs are - they are Web sites.
These voices are asking questions, requesting answers and bringing to light a multitude of topics you may not be getting elsewhere. And they're popping up in communities across the world.
They are the 21st-century version of talk-show callers, but they are bolstering their arguments with multiple links to multiple sources of information. ... If you are one of the roughly half of Americans not familiar with blogs, go ahead and step onto the new online front porch.
Bill, I'm a fan and I like you, but there hasn't been anything interesting on this website since Nov 04. I'm even a FDX pilot who is somewhat interested in TN politics, but man, it's become pretty boring. Spice it up a bit!
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