A blog for Cedar-Riverside

OK. So I’m far from an expert on blogging.  In fact, if it weren’t for the classes I’ve been taking, I probably wouldn’t have read or written a blog for many years to come (if ever). 

 

That said, I was asked to find a blog about my community . . . and I couldn’t.  At least, I couldn’t find a blog specifically about my community of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis.  This is sad but not surprising to me.  I did find a blog about Minneapolis but it appears that it is written by only six people. 

 

The motivation to look for a community blog came about because our class was looking at a blog for Lowell, MA.  That blog had many posts with many sections where people could discuss issues of concern to the community. 

 

The Minneapolis blog I found is part of Metblogs.com, which has a mission – they want to bring the type of locally focused coverage that old newspapers had back to the community.  There is some community involvement on the blog.  People post replies but they aren’t substantial replies.  The blog seems more focused on putting information out there than on creating a public dialogue about the subjects.  And I’ve never seen any advertising on the street that the blog exists. 

 

For a community blog to truly be a source of discussion about community issues, the community needs to know it exists.  As time goes by, I can see blogs becoming places of social discourse within communities but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

The biggest problem that I see with this blog is that there is no organization to the information.  The posts could be separated by subject so that one can search for specific content.  Instead, they just have politics, community events, restaurant reviews, and the arts all mixed together on the same page.  This lack of organization makes the blog less interesting because one never knows what the next post will be about.  If one is looking for politics, a restaurant review is not likely to hold their interest and bring them into the conversation.

 

Here’s the link if you’re interested: http://minneapolis.metblogs.com/