If you don’t read Emerge Peoria, you don’t know the latest news on the Charter School Initiative (they’ve chosen a principal, but are keeping it hush-hush), and you probably haven’t gotten a peek inside a classroom at Trewyn (warning: it’s disturbing). You should check them out.
Category Archives: Blogosphere
Saturday must-see links
If you haven’t already seen these this week, you’ll want to check them out:
- Outside the Horseshoe for January 26, 2010, from WCBU 89.9 FM radio. Tanya Koonce has a conversation with Peoria County Administrator Patrick Urich, Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons, and County Board Members Andrew Rand (Dist. 4) and Stephen Morris (Dist. 10) about the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum project. What we can deduce from the conversation here is that, at least in the county’s perception, Lakeview Museum is trying to dominate and control the project. I suspect their perception is true; Caterpillar had similar problems working with Lakeview which led to their decision years ago to put their visitor center in a separate building instead of sharing space in the museum.
- Blacktop Reform from DeWayne Bartels of the Peoria Times-Observer. You may be surprised to learn that the next time you want to get your driveway blacktopped, you’ll have to pay a lot more money and have fewer contractors from which to choose. The County Board is trying to run non-union blacktop paving contractors out of town. Let this be a lesson to current and future Board members: do your homework before you vote!
- School Board Member Laura Petelle’s thoughts on the final candidate for District 150’s New Superintendent. She wants to assure everyone that the process this time was “far different and more comprehensive” than the past. In other words, they did a better job of vetting the candidates than the board that hired Kay Royster did. That should give residents some comfort.
- Racism alleged within the Peoria County Democratic Central Committee. Rachael Parker is a sitting Peoria Board of Education member running for a seat on the Peoria County Board, and her campaign manager and communications director sent out a press release accusing local Democrats of being racist. They also questioned why the Peoria Journal Star did not interview Parker. I’m wondering how the Journal Star got a quote from Parker for their January 15 story if they didn’t interview her.
Happy reading/listening!
Peoria Anti-Pundit calling it quits
Randall Emert (aka the Peoria Anti-Pundit, aka Emtronics) is going to give up blogging (again). He’s stopped blogging a couple times before, only to start again, but this time he says he’s really stopping for good. He’ll be deleting his blog “very soon,” so visit it while you can.
I know how he feels. Blogging is addictive (seriously!), and I admire Randy for being able to stop. He’s been very critical of me on his blog over the years, but I don’t hold it against him. I wish him all the best.
Please visit kcdad at his own blog
Frequent commenter “kcdad” has his own blog over at LiveJournal. I encourage all my readers who enjoy his musings and repartee to converse with him there. He will no longer be posting here.
In a related story, I’ve updated my Terms of Use (point #10 is new).
If you want to discuss this action, please contact me directly via e-mail. Commenting on this post has been disabled. Comments made on other posts on this topic will be deleted.
A Knight in Forgottonia
He’s not in “Dragonland” (Pekin) anymore, but that won’t keep Matt Weidman from blogging. Now located in Wyatt Earp’s home town of Monmouth, Matt has started a new blog called “Blogging Forgottonia.”
I have to admit, I thought “Forgottonia” was a generic appellation, but it turns out that it refers specifically to the western part of Illinois, according to Wikipedia.
Welcome back, Mr. Weidman!
Blogroll additions
A couple of additions to my blogroll:
- Controversial commenter “kcdad” has started his own blog over at LiveJournal. If you’re into Communism and other anti-Capitalist concepts, this blog is for you.
- This blog (“Music for Ants”) has nothing to do with Peoria, but everything to do with music. Taylor Johnston reviews bands I’m too old to understand or appreciate. I’ll just admit it. But for any readers of mine who may be young and hip, check it out. His blog was cited in the New York Times not long ago, and I’m a little jealous that he gets free music sent to him — a little perk of being a music critic. He asked me recently if I get any free stuff sent to me for writing my blog. Um… no.
Give Emerge some love
EmergePeoria is having an interesting discussion with Erik Bush, one of the members of the new D150 finance committee. While you’re reading it, leave a comment of your own so that Emerge can feel the blog love.
“Journalism of regular citizens … alongside that of professionals”
In my last post, I referenced an article on a Seattle website called Crosscut.com. Here’s a little bit about that site:
Based in Seattle, Crosscut is a guide to local and Northwest news, a place to report and discuss local news, and a platform for new tools to convey local news. The journalism of regular citizens appears alongside that of professionals. News coverage with detachment, traditionally practiced by mainstream media outlets, coexists with advocacy journalism and opinion.
- Crosscut finds and highlights the best local journalism and the best local commentary, whether it’s the work of the biggest metropolitan daily newspaper or a part-time blogger. There is a multitude of worthy sources of information on the Internet, but few people have time to navigate them all.
- Crosscut publishes its own journalism and commentary. These are stories and angles others have missed or ignored. Our news coverage aims to complement that of other providers, to extend exploration of events and issues, to possibly encourage resolution.
- Crosscut embraces new tools and tries new things as technology evolves, mindful of the relative strengths of textual, photo, audio, and video journalism.
Is this a model that would work in Peoria? Imagine if we could aggregate the best of this area’s citizen journalism and put it up on a site along with professional journalists from the Journal Star and Times-Observer, among others. What a great resource that would be!
Readers’ Choice? Not hardly
PeoriaIllinoisan doesn’t mince words:
The Reader’s Choice Awards are a joke. A tool. A way to bring in and reward advertisers. It has nothing to do with the readers and there is hardly much choice involved.
He’s got a point. After reading his post, I took a look at the Journal Star Readers’ Choice Award ballot, and out of 56 categories, 38 (68%!) had only one business from which to “choose.” Looks like a sham to me.
New blogger you already know
There’s a new blogger out there, but you all know who he is. He used to write for the Journal Star… He was the religion editor… Remember yet?
That’s right — it’s Michael Miller! He’s got his own blog now called Rancho Miller. Check it out!