Right now,
the diaries section is filled with some very good local stories. I wanted to highlight what strike me as two absolutely remarkable pieces of local netroots work:
the launch of the Western Carolina New Network, and the work being done by Colorado bloggers on what appears to be
a corrupt, but very important, Republican 527 in the state. This is local blogging of the highest order.
I point this out because I think that local blogging is the way of the future for the progressive movement. Partially, I write think because I think that the national scene is close to tapped out: we currently reach nearly every progressive political junkie who is also a heavy user of the Internet. While there are some demographic areas where we could make more gains, in general I do not feel that there is much room for national political blogging to grow.
We already reach 17% of the Democratic electorate on a fairly regular basis, and how many more progressives are there who follow news closely enough, and who use the Internet frequently enough, to increase on that number? I can't imagine it is very many.
However, I do dare to imagine a progressive movement where what is happening in Colorado and Western North Carolina happens in every region of the country. Imagine the incredible benefit to the progressive movement. We are dealing with a near total market failure for local news in the country, which gives local action such as this the potential to weld far, far more influence on a local level than blogs can ever hope to do on a national level. Local progressive blogospheres can become local news, practically. They can give proper attention to all local races, whereas on national blogs we tend to offer simple glosses. If what was happening in Colorado and North Carolina right now was happening all over, it would be a lever of power to which the right-wing would have absolutely no answer. Talk a bout being able to attack on all fronts at once.
Among other places, we saw how this worked in Connecticut this year. Use this thread to tell people about your local blogosphere, and about ways you have seen people successfully build a local netroots scene.
