You've got to hand it to Brian Santaniello: the man has staying power.
Let's start with his 24 years on the Springfield City Council, where he enjoyed the title of the Council's "dean." Santaniello served under several mayors, but was most closely associated with Mike Albano, an affiliation that paid dividends—such as Santaniello's appointment as secretary of the city's Elections Commission in 2001.
The elections job opened when Albano forced into retirement the long-time secretary, Jim Sullivan, who'd been on a medical leave. It was a trademark Albano political dirty deed, this one with multiple repercussions: in one move, Albano was able to displace one nemesis, Sullivan, and reward a supporter, Santaniello.
Two other Albano pals also benefited from the move. When Santaniello left the Council mid-term, his seat was filled by the next-highest vote-getter in the previous election, then-School Committee member Jose Tosado. Tosado's School Committee seat was then filled by Robert McCollum, who'd lost his seat on the committee in the previous election.
Santaniello stayed in the job until the 2003 election of Mayor Charlie Ryan. Then, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, he retired as the new mayor took office. Already retired from the insurance business, Santaniello started up a shopping website called pennypincher.biz.
Now Santaniello has launched a new website, The Dread Report (www.thedreadreport.com), which apparently, and ambitiously, takes its name from the national Drudge Report. The Dread Report is a mix of local, national and entertainment news, much of it culled from other sources—local stories from CBS-TV 3's website, national stories from Yahoo News, the New York Times and other news websites.
Santaniello also writes his own pieces for the site, including a recent fond remembrance of Charlton Heston, headlined "Farewell Mr. Heston." ("When word flashed across the Internet yesterday that Charlton Heston had passed away, I almost didn't believe it. You see, the Charlton Heston I knew was larger than life. He was, well, invincible. Who could ever forget the great chariot scene in Ben Hur. Or how about when he played Moses in The Ten Commandments. My all time favorite was El Cid, even though he died in that one.") That same week, Santaniello also interviewed Chubby Checker, the ageless twister, who plugged both an upcoming Mohegan Sun show and his new line of beef jerky.
Just how popular Santaniello's new site is has been a topic of debate on MassLive.com's Springfield forum, where several posters have argued over the number of visitor hits The Dread Report is racking up.
Santaniello does appear to be having good luck with advertisers, especially given the fact that he's working in a media format where profits can be hard to come by. On a recent day, advertisers on his site included a couple of local law firms, a credit union, a cleaning service, an on-line college degree company, state Rep. Angelo Puppolo and (no surprise here) Chubby Checker Snacks. Hopefully, Santaniello will pump some of the revenue back into Web design; while recent changes have been a marked improvement over the original version—a headache-inducing mishmash of fonts and colors with an overly liberal use of exclamation points—the site still could stand a better sense of organization.
Santaniello would also do well to continue to expand his local coverage. To date, he's written a handful of political pieces, like a recent short article pumping up his former Council colleague Bud Williams as a potential mayoral candidate. According to the site, Councilor Kateri Walsh will soon begin writing for a blog called Kateri's Korner, which Santaniello plugs as "A government & political blog of interest!"
Springfield already has a small but vibrant community of local bloggers. Tom Devine (http://tommydevine.blogspot.com) started the trend with his pre-blog-era Baystate Objectivist website; while he's expanded to a more Valley-wide perspective since moving to Hampshire County a few years ago, he's still the best source for deep Springfield analysis. Heather Brandon's Urban Compass (www.urbancompass.net), which was hosted in earlier incarnations by MassLive and the Advocate, offers impressively thorough coverage of civic life in Springfield and Hartford, where Brandon moved last year. Bill Dusty's Springfield Intruder (http://springfieldintruder.com) covers news and politics with a distinctively right-leaning perspective, as does Victor Davila's Latino View (http://www.latinoview.blogspot.com). Arise co-founder Michaelann Bewsee's MichaelannLand (http://michaelannland.blogspot.com) comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum, with posts on social justice, poverty and homelessness (plus some lovely poetry).
What The Dread Report could add to that mix is an insider's perspective—although readers, of course, would be wise to read any politico's blog with a healthy degree of skepticism.
Devine likes the idea of elected officials writing blogs, at least in theory.
"I think every public servant, elected and appointed, should keep a blog," he told the Advocate. "Would it be too much for them to spend 15 minutes every day telling the people who pay their salary what they did for them today?" (Indeed, some savvy pols have already caught on to the idea of blogging as a way to connect to constituents, including Holyoke City Councilors Rebecca Lisi and Kevin Jourdain.)
Still, Devine isn't counting on many politicians to bare their souls on-line. "They are politicians, a naturally dishonest class," he says. "Politicians tell different things to different audiences, but in cyberspace campaign promises are forever. You can be called on what you said you would do in a way that old media never could."
As for The Dread Report, Devine says, "Brian can't write, neither can Kateri. The shame is, both would have interesting things to say if they were totally honest, which of course they won't be."
