Perhaps the best way to create a nexus for local bloggers is under the wing of a regional mass media outlet that takes the lead in gathering the disparate voices, such as KRON4 TV is doing with a site called The Bay Area is Talking. It is run by radio and new media personality Brian Shields who describes the site and explains how to get on its blogroll — which had 475 listings according to my count.

I should back up for a moment to say this train of thougt about a local blog registry began when I needed to find a way to publicize a regional activity. Thanks to Ourmedia co-founder J.D. Lasica who pointed me to the Talking site. I still haven’t figured out the ethics of sending unsolicited alerts to the bloggers gathered under Shields’ aegis, as it may strike the recipients as spam. But that is a separate issue. Meanwhile I scanned this regional blogroll for clues as to what some of my regional neighbors are talking about.

I recognized about a dozen of the titles including J.D. Lasica’s New Media Musings. The rest were mysteries of self expression waiting to be explored. A humorous title seemed to be a double-edged sword. I got a chuckle out of “I’m Dr. Laura’s Worst Nightmare” but when I clicked on it I was taken to “State of Grace,” where blogger Grace Davis explained :

“This blog used to be called, “I Am Dr. Laura’s Worst Nightmare”, but I got sick of the perverts who found my site through a Google search for “Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s nude pics”. I was equally tired of fending off hate emails from Stepford Wives who wanted to beat the crap out of me in defense of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s honor. So, I simply changed the blog name. “

Explore the list if you have time. Titles ranged from the civic-minded “California Election Law” to the wistful “Are you there god? It’s me, Margaret.”

Confronted with the range of the voices crying out for attention, I recalled a quote that I heard while participating in a published interview of futurist Paul Saffo who said:

“Sometimes I think we’re on this world for three reasons: to be useful, to tell each other stories and to collect stuff.”

Tom Abate
MiniMediaGuy
‘Cause if you ain’t Mass Media, you’re Mini Media