Subject: Re: democracy in action? From: Lou Cove Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 09:46:36 -0400
How the Web Was Won
Subject: Re: democracy in action? From: Lou Cove Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 09:46:36 -0400
In-Reply-To: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
List-Unsubscribe: 
Reply-To: Lou Cove 
Precedence: bulk
Status: O
X-Status: 

-----------> This message was posted to the ONLINE-NEWS list. <-----------

>My thinking is that a web site with city council agendas, proposed
>ordinances, contact information etc. is the modern day equivalent of the
>legal notices that are still a source of income for many small papers. 

I think this is a great idea in principle. We're always trying to make more
local information available. 
But my real concern is the always-underestimated workload associated with
building and (more importantly) maintaining web pages. I'm reluctant to
trust web novices who want to catch the wave (or who genuinely want to
share information as widely as possible) but have little experience and
unreasonable expectations about how to make it happen.
Besides avoiding the potential conflict-of-interest perception, I'd be
worried about adopting pages which may not be properly updated and which
reflect badly on the site itself.
Casual visitors to a site may have difficulty distinguishing original
editorial content from city/town postings which could end up being
outdated, unedited, etc. and blame us for errors that are beyond our control.
How do we make the information available while keeping the distinction
explicit?
Lou


********************************
Lou Cove    
Producer
MassLive
136 West Street
Northampton, MA 01060
Ph.413-584-3521

http://www.masslive.com
Online for Western Massachusetts
********************************



At 09:43 PM 7/20/98 -0700, you wrote:
>-----------> This message was posted to the ONLINE-NEWS list. <-----------
>
>
>My thinking is that a web site with city council agendas, proposed
>ordinances, contact information etc. is the modern day equivalent of the
>legal notices that are still a source of income for many small papers.  Are
>there very many papers that have taken on the task of hosting or
>maintaining official city sites?  How are these site segregated from
>editorial or advertising content?  Or are they? 
>
>Any thoughts or insights appreciated . . . 
>==========
>Bart Preecs
>bpreecs@accessone.com
>


->  ONLINE-NEWS uses Lyris mailing list software. http://www.lyris.com  <-
-> Change your list settings:  http://www.planetarynews.com/online-news <-
->   Online-News is archived: http://www.planetarynews.com/on-archive   <-
You are subscribed to online-news as: [rballard@access.digex.net]
To unsubscribe, forward this msg to leave-online-news-20155U@clio.lyris.net
SPONSOR: Email Publishing - http://www.emailpub.com


From bounce-online-news-20155@clio.lyris.net Tue Jul 21 09:59:50 1998
>From bounce-online-news-20155@clio.lyris.net  Tue Jul 21 09:59:50 1998
Received: from clio.lyris.net (clio.lyris.net [207.90.155.3])
	by pony-1.mail.digex.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id JAA09252
	for ; Tue, 21 Jul 1998 09:59:49 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from 204.144.142.2 by clio.lyris.net (Lyris SMTP service); 21 Jul 98 06:54:42 PDT7 from: to:
Received: from indra.com (net.indra.com [204.144.142.1])
	by server.indra.com (8.8.5/) with ESMTP id IAA04988
	for ; Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:54:26 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from accessone.com (soda.accessone.com [198.68.191.24])
	by indra.com (8.8.5/Spike-8-1.0) with ESMTP id HAA01931
	for ; Tue, 21 Jul 1998 07:58:08 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from bpreecs (kirk03-12.accessone.com [209.43.128.108])
	by accessone.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/PIH) with SMTP id GAA20370;
	Tue, 21 Jul 1998 06:58:02 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: 
X-Sender: bpreecs@accessone.com
To: online-news@planetarynews.com