(Via PJNet) “Blogging in the Inland NW” is a list of links to local bloggers by Ken Sands of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane. He got 40 of ‘em listed, and as usual, some are more interesting than others. In interviews with PJNet, he said:

“Journalism traditionally has been reporters and editors performing the gatekeeping function. We decide what the news is. But with the Web, now everybody has the ability to become published…Rather than be afraid of it or work against it, we should be going with the flow. If this is where our communication is going as a society, we should try to figure out how to facilitate it…I don’t know of anyone else opening up their pages to community bloggers in this fashion. (One blogger, for example, is a profane 21-year-old goth devotee.)”

And PJNet is sponsoring an August conference in Toronto: “Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism”

Participatory journalism tools in the form of weblogs and other electronic communications are changing the face of mass media, but are complementary to public journalism. These are powerful tools as Howard Dean’s campaign proved by using weblogs and MeetUp to get 170,000 people nationwide to sign up for face-to-face meetings. The Daily Kos, a citizen run weblog, has 1.5 million unique visitors a month. These are just two of many impressive examples. Learn how we can borrow from or incorporate these tools to improve the state of journalism.

And I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but Jeff Jarvis is setting up quite a network of local bloggers across the country. There are so many great ideas flying around that we could implement at my school…if only we had the time.
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Article about the Weblogging program set up by a student at Reed College in Oregon where any student who wants one can have one. He’s got 147 going right now. An interesting read that gets to both sides of college level use of blogs and points to a number of other heretofore unknown colleges that are starting to use them, one even for recruitment purposes!

Blogging is a relatively small but quickly growing phenomenon in the world of Internet users, and, like other online technologies, it is slowly invading college life. Professors are using blogs to teach and publish. College administrators use the diaries to recruit. Students use them to learn, to opine (and whine), and to network. In the Reed case, blogging has led to a student community beyond the borders of the campus, a community that Reed administrators can’t control but can peek at.

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Well this is a bummer. My Google News search feeds from XML Mania stopped working and it appears the search has been “discontinued as a order of Google Inc.” Hmmm… Luckily the service from Voidstar seems to be working.
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