Blogs Need to Go Local

Slant Point blogged Chasing ghosts... I cringe more and more when I see the bloggers on the right quest for the elusive Instalanche. I understand the desire and I've felt the momentary euphoria, but I simply believe it just isn't worth it. Not to pick on this blogger, because I never actually read his stuff,

There you made your first mistake. Danny Carlton (a.k.a. Jack Lewis) has a good blog, and while he probably does not cover that much local New York stuff, he does have a good mix of national, local, and faith posts.

but I came across this post titled "Around the Blogosphere." It's got the top stories of the week and the top bloggers' posts about those stories. Significant, yes, but pure marketing wishful linking. One of the reasons I dropped my national blogroll to the bottom of my sidebar and switched to primarily local politics and bloggers is to distinguish myself. I was tired of hopping up and down crying, "Me! Me! Me!" I care about NYC and frankly there are enough people on my side talking up the big issues, that one more voice is unnecessary. For it is the little, more local issues that need blogs to give them their "legs."

There are several blogs that do a very good job when it comes to Tulsa, as well, including BatesLine, HFFZ.org News, Tulsans For Election Integrity, and Lewis Crest News, who are a lot more mobil than I am (I am disabled and pretty much home-bound), but I try to cover some of the same stuff Insta-Malkin-GOP-Roger-LGF-Power does, some of the local stuff BatesLine, et. al. cover, some of the faith stuff that Jack-Anchoress-et.al. cover, as well as other things that interest me, like new technology items, blogging, etc. I also monitor BlogOklahoma to see what new local bloggers might be doing.

Remember when this fad started? That was our purpose. Now many of us simply mimic each other and echo the top echelon. Take a look at the blogrolls of new blogs: Insta-Malkin-GOP-Roger-LGF-Power bars are what they are. I won't deny marketing is a huge factor at Slant Point, but it is focused on local and smaller bloggers, and I seek to position myself in NYC. When stories break in this area, I want people to come to me, not the top. I interview local politicians. I want to be the expert - the blog about NYC. It's my 2005 strategy, and I've seen positive results so far. I urge others to follow - whether here in NYC or elsewhere. Get involved locally (you can still plug Bush & Bolton once in a while) and stake out your territory. Believe me, you'll get far better traffic and a far better following. That's the reality of 2005 in the blogosphere.

Danny Carlton commented Actually the purpose of my "Around the Blogosphere" post, which is just one of many daily posts, is two-fold. A. it provides a quick reference to what other (not just the top bloggers) are saying about topics of interest, and B. it creates traffic as people visiting the blogs I mention follow trackbacks. It takes me roughly half an hour to whip together using an aggregator, and so far has been worth the effort.

Which Aggregator do you use Danny, and which RSS feeds do you monitor?

Chris Short commented Interesting point. However, being in NYC gives you a wealth of news, stories, and ideas to blog about from a local front. Many bloggers aren't in big, big cities like New York. There are 8,085,742 people in NYC. That's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of politicians to interview in a fairly small geographic area. More power to you. Blogging local things in NYC is maybe half-a-step down from national blogging though. For those of us in smaller cities it's not as easy to find things to blog about. From conception of a person's blog they are told to blog and blog often but with local stories in smaller cities it's not so much of a thing to do. Sure you could blog about state issues but someone in Florida would be hard pressed to blog a state issue that isn't already in the national press where as someone in Oklahoma would pretty much be ignored by everyone except Oklahomans. It's a quandry of sorts. I try to be national and global with local mixed in. Sorry, but I don't want a regional web site; I want a global one.

Slant Point commented Look at the Tennessee political scandal. Everyone turned to Tennessee blogs. Washington state recount? Seattle blogs. Tsunami? Far-east blogs. Orange Revolution? Ukrainian blogs. It is important to stress locality. Instapundit and Captain Ed can't cover the news like a local. They lack specific references, perspectives, etc. Sure they can digest the print media and rehash wiwth their opinions, but there is value to being local. And yes, New York has lots of news. We have Hillary coming up. But when I talk about the governor or attorney general race, I expect many non-NYers to tune out. Back to the original post, I don't want to pick on Danny based on one post. His choices are legit and serve a legit blog purpose - driving traffic. I jus think when the blog bubble bursts, the ones positioned on locale or issue versus general politics and echoing will survive. What happens to Instapundit when people like Danny stop reading and linking and starting new blogs referencing Glenn? What happens when the return on investment no longer draws new bloggers like a gold rush? Oh, and finally, just as Batesline.com if Oklahoma is irrelevant.

I don't understand the English, but I think you are saying Batesline is irrelevant unless something happens in Oklahoma. If that is what you think, you have not been following his blog much. What about the Tulsa Whirled stuff that was covered in a LOT of blogs that had never heard of the Tulsa World before.

Something hapens everywhere, and a lot of this is positioning for being at the right timme when the ews hits the fan. If you don't know the names of your local politicians, and your city hall bursts into flames, you won't do well reporting about it. Any old blogger could do the same.

Danny Carlton commented I have a list of about 70 to 80 blogs in an aggregator that I quickly run through and pull out the entries that interest me most. As long as those I link to provide trackbacks, or even more importantly, trackbacks listed on the main page, I'll get visitors (who may then become regulars) as well as links that are counted in the ecosystem, providing more prominence. Getting noticed so others link to you is also a big plus. Being higher up in the ecosystem helps in that area.

Danny Carlton (a.k.a. Jack Lewis) blogged There's an interesting discussion at SlantPoint, sparked by the use of yours truly as an example of how not to blog. At the root it seems Scott Sala, the blog's author, doesn't comprehend that while those of us who live in small towns, like living here, there's really not much going on to blog about like there is in places like NYC, where he lives. That was driven home a while back when my kids and I wondered what would happen if we got our local paper a day early like Gary Hobson on the series “Early Edition”. We skipped our own town and looked at the paper for neighboring Tulsa. Frankly, there would have been very little that we could have done, since there weren't that many serious local stories that were that timely. But Tulsa's a nice town anyway.

That says a lot about the quality of the Tulsa World