PJNet

Len posted last week about the frequent blogging I did during three days of rising river water in the small town of Northfield, Minnesota where I live.

I’ve included some of the comments we received from local citizens in the extended entry below.

I think our experiment ‘worked’ in part because it provided coverage of a breaking news story in a way that other media in town couldn’t or didn’t. The local newspaper, the Northfield News, is published twice per week on Wed. and Sat. Their website only contains the content from the print edition and you have to be a print subscriber to get at it. The local radio station, KYMN, did provide regular news updates on the rising water but they don’t have a website for photo or video or audio clips. The local public access cable service, NTV 26, doesn’t do breaking news stories.

Posting dozens of photos of a breaking news event is a unique way for any media website to offer something that radio, TV, and print can’t do.

I posted several photos of this location during the 3 days as way to give people a visual reference for the river’s rising.

I tend to err on the side of quantity over quality when it comes to posting photos in our Northfield.org Photo Gallery. With a digital camera and ample web server storage space, there are essentially no cost inhibitions. And since each photo has its own URL, it makes it more likely that people will email friends, family and colleagues when a particular photo catches their interest… or link to it, if they have a blog.

The weblog-plus-photogallery provided a way to highlight particular aspects of this event… and in that respect, I took on the role of an editor, using the blog as my bully pulpit to highlight photos of the mayor, city council members, police, public works director — public servants in action.

Mayor Keith Covey surveys the city workers surveying below who are preparing to protect the two power transformers on either side of the footbridge.

I didn’t editorialize about their activities but of course, just choosing them to feature positively in a blog is an editorial decision and reflects my belief that the town’s public servants don’t get enough kudos for the work they do.

Lastly, I took the opportunity to provide a little education about the watershed we live in with this image

and a link to the local Cannon River Watershed Project.

Thanks to Len Witt for the opportunity to expound on this.

I’ll turn on the COMMENTS feature for this post in case anyone has questions or comments.

The “breaking news” coverage provided during the flooding in Northfield was excellent, especially considering Northfield.org is all-volunteer.

I love the photos! Thanks for making them available. I wanted to get photos but never had time or my camera along to do so. These are great. The links are also good – comprehensive connections to useful information.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2004 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Citizen journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.