Grassroots Journalism from the Trenches

Al "The Computer Dude" Jordan created a contest at his ElwoodIndiana.org site that I thought was worth a mention. He's giving away $50 to a member of the site. The winner (with the best decorated house in the small city of 5,000 households) will be voted on by the members of the site.

I've been super busy of late, but I wanted to mention the success my friend Al Jordan is having over at ElwoodIndiana.org. He recently asked for help and had a couple trustworthy and hardworking citizens step forward to moderate anonymous comments. His site's really taken off since earlier this year.

Wow. What a day. I went out a little before noon to cover the 10th annuel Character Counts celebration in downtown, Anderson. About three or four hours after returning from the event (with photos, video and information...) here's look at The Herald Bulletin's homepage and the Anderson Free Press homepage. Keep in mind that I'm one person and they have a lot of resources at their disposal.

Well, another issue is out. At least some of the copies. Around 17,000 will be mailed October 8th. The rest I'll be handing out around town and at events. There's a thread at AFP - where we actually have quite an active close-knit community.

Al Jordan, who runs ElwoodIndiana.org, recently decided to turn off anonymous comments on his site. He approved each and every one before it went on the site. A few months ago, participation *really* took off on the site.

After a long wait, I believe it's been rolled out to the public at large - Self Serve PPC Ads for Myspace. I'm sure the news will be spreading over the intrawebs over the next day or so.

There's a thread at AFP I think I should highlight. Someone points out that a repaired railroad crossing wasn't done very well.

Others step up and offer who to contact. Then someone does the research to find out the number of the crossing. At least one person has reported it to the railroad company so far.