New Editorial Direction
It is no secret that I have been disappointed in the lack of participation on this site by local candidates. For all the traffic we get, there is still little effort expended to interact with the voting public. The people of this county need to be better informed than they are, in my opinion. Local candidates and local issues are an afterthought to most people, who are mesmerized by national and international news and blind to the troubles at home.
Obviously, I am not pleased with the way our local government exploits our ignorance, so incumbents will probably consider this site to be “unfair” or “biased”. Well, it doesn’t have to be. They can still get a username and password and blog their brains out here. And I wish they would! The public needs you to be accessible to their concerns. They can also comment on anything I have to say. The comments here are moderated, but it’s only to keep out spammers who want to share their Viagra ads and stripper-cams. My critics have always been allowed free reign to say whatever they want.
This new policy means a lot more work for me, and I still get paid nothing for it, so it’s not like I am going to be able to quit my business and hound public officials full time. And I will not be using this site as a platform to surreptitiously run for office of some kind. I have been queried about this by several people, and I have entertained the notion, but I have decided against it. There needs to be a much broader answer to our current apathy crisis than getting one man elected. There needs to be a general uprising among the mainstream voters to demand accountability and replacement of current officials. People should be standing in line to take their jobs, but so far there is just the disappointing trickle of interest.
Thanks for staying tuned. I will keep you abrest of things as I am able. Anyone who wants to help is welcome.
Don Marsh
While not registered in the county of Alachua (I am a student and prefer to vote in my family’s place of residence) I do think that the political discourse of the area is limited. And unfortunately usually limited to trivial topics or those that have tended to be perpetually played out for as long as I can remember (and have researched). I have tried to do what I can do by putting out a nonpartisan publication for the past two big election cycles, but usually run into time delays (working with students on an extracurricular activity) and monetary constraints which lead to problems with our overall distribution. However, I feel that our outreach tends to be too limited and often received by most as having ulterior motives. It seems that the general public thinks that politics is self-interested and dirty and that no one can be interested in pure unadulterated political dissemination.
1Mr. Marsh I feel your pain and do think we need to encourage a higher level of discourse and substance of policy initiatives with our public SERVANTS. I think to do this we have to get the public on our side. They need to want to understand local politics, and we need to figure out how to encourage this. Keep me up-to-date on what you are thinking, because I am interested.