Blogger Tom Devine at a Springfield Finance Control Board meeting with his digital camera. Next to him is reporter Mike Plaisance.
In contrast to Web sites that strictly provide information, blogs offer opportunities to create and foster community. Seemingly out of nowhere, people with similar interest yet different backgrounds can come together around common ideas. Like any online community, blogs can generate their own culture. And from time to time, interactions in person can take place, stemming from a blog community or just touching on it, and maybe trying to parlay insights gained in that community into expanded circles of real-world activity.
Toward that end, over the weekend I taught a "Start Blogging" class at the central branch of the Springfield library. It was interesting to see who all showed up: maybe a dozen participants, generally an older cross-section of city residents with a few folks from the suburbs added to the mix. I did not want to lecture them; I wanted to get them right into the feel of starting a blog. After all, I was leery of blogging before I started one myself: it seemed like a superficial activity, providing redundant links in quippy bits. Where was the deeper meaning? Blogging is what you make it, and starting one helps you ask yourself the question, Do I have something to say?
One gentleman, a white, retired accountant who lives in Longmeadow, talked with me at some length about his passion for taxes. He wants to blog about the Massachusetts estate tax, enacted in 2003, which he feels is pushing retirees out of the state and causing it to lose its wealthiest residents.
In introducing the concept of a blog to the class, I mentioned the importance of seeking out other blogs, connecting via comments, and providing a link to your own blog in kind. Gradually, a community is formed. Locally speaking, such community is vitally needed—because there are precious few public forums for meaningful, inclusive discussion in the city—but in the broader context of Internet communities, reader feedback tends to be highly valued, and the dialogue becomes the story.
Such dialogue can easily become nasty when we don’t see each other face to face. Recently I ran across an eastern Massachusetts-based blog related to education. The blogger wrote briefly about driving to Springfield for some reason, and a commenter called the city "the armpit of Massachusetts." (There is dispute over what place, really, is that armpit. In my opinion there must be a maximum of two.) I testily commented on the comment, and later heard directly from the commenter. We exchanged a couple of emails and I was able to explain my view that the city is turning around.
A Springfield native herself with two brothers living in Longmeadow, the commenter wrote to me that aside from Gus and Paul’s, she can’t name a single good thing about the city. While I can name good things, I may not be able to change this person’s mind, and my role as a blogger does not have to be oriented toward that activity. Donning the boxing gloves in the blog world, for me, is not that effective. I generally prefer to keep things on the mild side so that emotions don’t cloud reason. But such lessons are often learned through mistakes.
MassLive.com producer Kristen Beam of Sound Check and The Fray covers an event visited by Governor Deval Patrick.
One Urban Compass reader, a Springfield resident, recently emailed to tell me that she was having ongoing trouble posting comments here. (The technology leaves a lot to be desired—and is being overhauled—bear with me.) She wanted to attend "Start Blogging" but couldn’t, and wrote instead to share her idea for a blog. Her vision includes a brick-and-mortar plan for an arts-related community center with a grant-funded, non-profit umbrella. A musician herself with small business experience, she is currently seeking 501(c)3 status as well as a strongly business-oriented person to include in the project. She asked me, "What do you think? Do you have any ideas? Would a blog be an appropriate vehicle for this type of information?" She added that she wants to use a blog to generate buzz.
The more local blogs the better, as I told the class at the library; we need folks who will emerge into the online community from whatever their vantage point and begin to share their hopes and dreams. Like-minded readers will appear eventually, helping to put this powerful online tool to work for us beyond merely the virtual world.
My limited experience here tells me that Springfield needs sustainable projects with the type of passionate, committed investment that will serve as a shock absorber for the rough cultural terrain. A place-based blog can be a great way to begin to form community, which enhances the shock-absorption necessary to help projects persist in the face of difficulty. Much of the difficulty faced locally is in residents’ own understandably troubled, discouraged attitudes. Aspects of community life have been worn down to their threadbare essence; building a robust community up again, growing something with vitality, may well need to include the specific, micro-level, individual connections blogs can begin to offer.
