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.
Check out Nashville101.com, a new community blog modeled after Greensboro101.com in Greensboro, N.C. Roch Smith, creator of both sites - as well as Charlotte101.us and, coming soon, Syracuse101.com, says Nashville101.com "is one of the few trial sites I've launched to explore the possibility of creating citizens' media sites in cities throughout the country."
Smith explained the concept for the blogs in an email to me this week:
The idea is to provide unbiased access to the blogging voices of the community. Some communities are ahead of others and that's one of the reasons I chose Nashville as an early trial, because blogging is exploding there.
I want the 101s to be a place where people can navigate the current discussions among the local blogosphere at a glance and see the various posts presented without prejudice. One way we accomplish that in Greensboro is through the use of a volunteer editorial board. As with the other 101s, there are places where blog posts are simply aggregated in reverse chronological order. There is zero editorial intervention there. All 101s however also provide some mechanism for featuring articles (giving them greater prominence).
Our guidelines in Greensboro instruct the board to look for feature that are interesting, well written and of local interest. We have a board to make sure that those selections (as well as other policy decisions for the site) are fair and non-partisan. I think we do a pretty good job in that regard.
Nashville101 lacks such a board and I am currently acting as the sole editor. I would like to see a board develop for Nashville, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. (Charlotte and Syracuse have local people who are prepared to gather volunteers.) Such a board would then manage the site, selecting features, adding links and events, and posting poll questions (a surprisingly hard thing to do for an out-of-towner, even for one who reads the Nashville blogs every day.)
I'm also developing an ad network that will give bloggers a better shake on the advertising they run on their sites and offer advertisers an opportunity to focus on a geographic specific market. (It takes into consideration the feedback I got from a recent survey which you took. Thank you.) More on that later, if you're interested.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.
The Nashville site doesn't work, or at least it didn't at 6:50 on Sat. morning.
Posted by: Ronj at June 18, 2005 06:51 AM
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