Blogs: Diversion or Benefit?

Who reads blogs? Bloggers read them, sure. A handful of concerned citizens read them too, and a handful of them leave comments on the blog postings. But does this emphasis on blogs help educate the mainstream, or just focus the energized in perfecting their arguments to each other. Blogs are great for sharing information the mainstream won't report, but getting that information is only the start.

I'm as guilty as anyone. I created this blog in the hopes of spreading the history that I've painfully lived related to the land use machine in King County. Have I shared that knowledge? I don't know. Have I shared as much with a detailed post compared to a 200-word letter to the local papers? I don't think so.

While the Letters to the Editor pages on local papers are generally little more than Bush-bashing and anti-American assaults on nearly anything Republican, those that write letters are sharing a sense of the voters with the respective editorial boards. Secondly, many readers who turn to the letters page do so assuming it the only place where they will see an alternative to the liberal anti-Bush nonsense that is typically printed throughout the rest of the paper.

If anyone wants to know of one thing they can do that will make a difference, albiet small, it's writing letters to your elected leaders and writing letters to area papers. Papers in particular, are always looking for a letter to offset the half-dozen they're going to print anyway that promote the liberal viewpoint. The more letters from conservatives, the more likely the conservative viewpoint will get some ink. And we all know that the letters page is just about the only way conservatives are going to get any voice in the mainstream media.

So don't waste the opportunity. If you've written a comment on a blog and it sounds like a point that the community should hear, send it to the Times, PI, King County Journal, etc. Let some people who won't normally agree with you read it. That will make a difference.

opinion@seattletimes.com (Seattle Times)

editpage@seattlepi.com (Seattle PI)

letterstoeditor@kingcountyjournal.com (King County Journal)