Great Expectations

We have a taker for District 8. Still looking for bloggers for Districts 4, 6, 7 and 10.

You don't have to live in a specific district to attend that event. But to see a map of the Council districts, go to http://www.phila.gov/citycouncil/maps/index.html

We're down to one opening for citizen bloggers: The 4th District.

Monday, Feb. 25
7pm – 9:30pm
North Light Community Center
175 Green Lane

If you're interested, or know someone who might be, please e-mail me at jchester@phillynews.com.

It's great to have citizen bloggers, but it would be even more great if the union for the Ink and DN would allow writers to cover events after 5pm, which is where most of the heavy lifting really occurs.

The rest of us have jobs, then go to these meetings. Why is the paid press effectively exempt from covering local news?

Even board meetings that are locally critical, relevant, and sell papers BEFORE 5pm are not well covered. Do we need citizen bloggers for those too?

And what about background before attending? Do we need citizen researchers?

Apparently so, because bloggers on www.phillyblog.com have been writing for years about the abuses by pet organizations that only recently garnered interest from the Ink or DN. Kenny Gamble. Universal Companies. PHA stuck in climate of shrinking resources, but hog tied from making changes it needs to stay financially solvent. Doc's odd dealings, Fumo's mini-fiefdom that has its own clean up, its own rules, its own unique assessments, and no one wants to talk about it. The Bey family drug gang. The Bey relationship with its faith and with its political allies.

What about fact checkers? Instead of just cutting the stuff that ties it all together, which you can tell from reading some of these articles, that the writer was developing a point from the facts.

Do we need citizen fact checkers for those as well?

I think we see it pretty clearly when the NYTs is writing about Philly local issues with more clarity than the local papers. Their article on the PHA v. Gamble feud was concise, rich, and a primer on how the local papers should be taking local news -- seriously.'

The NYTs takes local news as seriously as anything happening in Aceh or Iraq. Sign of a world class paper is that you have to read their local coverage because it so closely parallels, or even actually covers your own city.

Maybe someday we won't need to rely on citizen bloggers because we'll have journalists who are citizens of Philly full time.

We could use a citizen blogger to attend the South of South St. Neighborhood Association Board elections. At issue is how SWCC in SP will spend more than $100,000 in grants to clean up the city.

FEB. 13th, WEDNESDAY, 7:30PM, Marian Anderson Rec. Center, entrance on 17th between Catharine and Fitzwater Sts.

Maybe some enterprising young writer will ask why the neighborhood associations have to contract private street cleaners to do the street cleaning regularly done in other cities.

The meeting shows the caliber of people who are working (after 5pm) for a better city -- architects, attorneys, builders/renovators, a host of people with advanced degrees and strong IT skills -- are all pooling their resources to start parks, (www.montrosepark.org), clean and beautify, and basically hold the feet to the fire of the groups and agencies tasked with this work who don't in Southwest Center City.

Hope to see you there.

We have a citizen blogger for each district. Thanks for everyone's interest.