South of the James

Warning: Blatantly self-serving plugs lie ahead.   

Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch examines Virginia’s emerging blogosphere and its potential impacts. Tackling the growing phenomenon from a deliberately local bent, the authors interviewed several Richmond-area bloggers (ahem)and blog watchers to get their takes on the role that political blogging plays on the local and state scene. For the most part, the content was solid, but one peculiar comment from an interview subject did stand out.

In response to questions about blogs as sources of information and opinion on local happenings, Chesterfield County’s spokesman Don Kappel apparently “says he has not made a habit of monitoring them as he does the mainstream media.”This writer, for one, find this curious as one of the bloggers questioned, Andrea Epps is a well-known community activist who has worked closely with county leaders on growth and education issues. Additionally, South of the James is often frequented by county employees (those tracking programs do come in handy), and readers should recall that Midlothian District Planning Commissioner Dan Gecker wrote a guest column a few months back.

Additionally, the blog managers over at the county’s Economic Development office made the following comment in response to a comment on their initial post: “Thank you Mr. Haskins for mentioning this blog on South of the James. Your blog is a great resource for the community and we can only hope to be able to emulate the fine writing and spirited discussion that takes place on your site.” If Mr. Kappel is truly not regularly watching local bloggers and others who are covering the goings-on in Chesterfield, he should be. As the RTD article shows, when people need to know stuff, they also turn to blogs.

OK, now that this post is over, I’ll try to figure out what to do with the time remaining from my 15 minutes of fame…