Tip O'Neill Never Blogged, But He Should Have

I can't believe that I went through that entire post without citing Tip O'Neill. Let me correct that:

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Maura Keaney is a local blogger who made a difference. In early 2005, she used her weblog to rally opposition to a Virginia bill that would have required women to report fetal deaths – legislation worded so broadly that it was seen as a threat to women's rights. The bill's sponsor, Delegate John Cosgrove of Chesapeake, withdrew the bill after receiving more than 500 emails prompted by the website's reporting....

Keaney, who is taking time off from her career as a teacher and Democratic activist to care for her ailing parents, is one of an emerging breed of writers who use their blogs to cover local issues. The medium is the World Wide Web, and bloggers involved in national stories and campaigns have gotten plenty of attention. But if all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill famously stated, then it makes sense that political weblogs would go local, too.

In a nation of one newspaper towns and muted local discourse, bloggers are pushing traditional journalists by gnawing hard on local issues. They're reading legislation, attending city council meetings, questioning the coverage and editorial posture of the local press – and forcing people to take notice of issues that might otherwise be ignored.

Across the country from Keaney in Portland, Oregon, The One True b!X, aka Christopher Frankonis, writes a site called Portland Communique. Described as "an ongoing experiment in amateur journalism which began as little more for The One True b!X than a way to learn more about the City which had become his home, to force himself to write about it every day," Portland Communique, launched in 2002, has found its way into the "must read" list of City Council members, City Hall staffers and local political junkies, not to mention Portland-area reporters....

Frankonis, who scratches out a living from donations to the site, said Portland Communique has become popular due to its focused attention on local issues. "I think what I'm getting at is that the mainstream press sometimes missed is a matter of context," he said. "So often stuck in producing whatever the current 'snapshot' of a given might be, they sometimes forget to take the opportunity to step back and see where a story fits into a larger, more overall picture. That's one of the things I try, over time, to do."...

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