Good Government —
John Wonderlich at Sunlight Foundation quotes Steven Clift today…
When I was a child and my father had cancer, I remember neighbors coming to our assistance in our time of need. Today, with modern life keeping neighbors as strangers, we must use these new tools to break down barriers to community. You deserve the right to [...]
Matt, on the LocalMouth blog, writes recently…
Personally, I think there’s great potential for simple online tools to bring local communities more closely together. It may be a struggle at the start to get together a critical mass of neighbours, and it may need a liberal dash of coaxing, but once you’ve got the ball rolling, [...]
I, for one, am looking forward to November 5… that’s right, the day AFTER the big election. Front Porch Forum has been swamped with postings from citizens and elected officials alike… advocating for and against candidates and ballot measures. The State Rep. race in Chittenden 3-04, the police station building site in South Burlington and [...]
Matt Ryan reported for the Burlington Free Press today…
Vermont campaign signs along Vermont 15 in front of the Essex Junction Shopping Center have prompted a departing state legislator to call on citizens to boycott businesses within the center — even though the businesses’ managers said they had nothing to do with the signs.
Rep. Peter Hunt, [...]
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is opening up the third round of its News Challenge.
We’re giving away around $5 million in 2009 for the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs.
If you have a great idea that will improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web [...]
Burlington Police Officer Mike Hemond posted an update on Front Porch Forum today about a well-publicized vandalism case (this blog, Seven Days and Burlington Free Press).
Hello everyone, it’s been a pretty steady late summer / fall for me, so I’ve not been able to post on the Forum for a bit. I’d just like to [...]
Keith Harris in the United Kingdom writes today that “What’s missing is communication, not information” on his blog Neighbourhoods. Some of his points…
This is very definitely work in progress but maybe the argument is something like this:
for various reasons there is a crisis of local social connections which causes evident damage
examples of local communication (post-its [...]
We keep stumbling over pieces about the value of “local” in the digital universe (and vice versa)… right out of Front Porch Forum’s playbook. Today it was a couple of journalists…
Mark Potts writes in part…
Anyone who questions that people are interested in talking about their communities hasn’t dug in to the plethora of listservs, Yahoo [...]
Oof dah… the Bridge Street bridge in Richmond, VT, was closed late Thursday… from an already tedious one lane down to zero. The good people of Richmond (and surrounding towns, such as Huntington, should be grateful for Selectman Erik Filkorn. He turned immediate to Front Porch Forum and got the news into hundreds of local [...]
Bob Tedeschi wrote in the New York Times (Aug. 10, 2008) about local news blogs and included some interesting data…
Baristanet.com [Montclair, N.J., and surrounding towns]:
Posts about five or six videos, articles or photos every weekday.
Debuted in early 2004 and now attracts 18,000 readers on peak days… and more than 82,000 monthly readers, or roughly twice [...]