Lakeland Local

Sentinel Writes About Polk Bloggers

Posted by Chuck Welch on April 3, 2008 7:11 AM | Permalink   | Comments (3)

Bloggers in Polk work to create connections is an article in today's Orlando Sentinel. Take a moment to read it please.

I can't tell you if the reporter accurately quoted Lorrie Walker or Josh Hallett, but what little she has of our conversation is accurate. She and I spoke for about an hour and a half on many topics from CSX to city elections to my irritating habit of not giving reporters my age. Precious little could make it into a story that short.

From the start I didn't expect we'd see much in the Sentinel. I will say the reporter seemed interested in a full and accurate story. However, the Sentinel seems to consider the name of this county to be "Rural Polk County." I get the feeling they think of bloggers like dancing bears. It's not how well we dance, it's that we dance at all.

The most telling part of the article comes from someone whose job it is to put spin on the news everyday:

Joy Townsend, spokeswoman for Winter Haven, said information from bloggers isn't always credible. "It's another way of gossip," she said.

What a blatant effort to discredit those who don't agree with you. I wonder exactly what she considers to be gossip in Lakeland Local, or Empirical Polk, or at Aikane Leo? I have never received a single email, note, or call from Ms Townsend asking that I make a correction on anything I've reported. I guess she couldn't find anything I've written to be inaccurate.

If she believes that equating blogs with gossip will somehow stem a flow of information she can't spin...she's in for a long, bumpy ride as a spokesperson.