Thanks to Brittney over at Eye on Blogs for sharing this with her readers. I get a fair amount of emails regarding my site but Gmail was flooded today. I think that Brittney poses a great question on her site and I want to respond to some of the comments I have received about the original post.

Should governmental agencies release memos and other information given freely to mainstream media organizations to any blogger who asks? Should there be vetting of bloggers? Wouldn’t an agency become overrun if they granted every request, or are there really that many minibloggers interested to make a dent?

The point of a press release is to announce information to the public. It doesn’t take much to have a short list of mainstream news to proactively contact with the hopes that they may run a story. The question is what about the rest of us that want to know what the mainstream isn’t covering. There have been many cases where I see a press release on another site that has got zero exposure on mainstream news. The city is capable of publishing this information online. If bloggers can’t be added to the distribution list for information the city sees fit for a press release, at least make it accessible on demand. I’m willing to bet that the people of the City of Concord want to know whats going on in their city and they know that they don’t get everything from mainstream news. People are hungry for information and local blogs help fill that void. Why do you think local blogs are getting so much attention?

Should there be vetting of bloggers?

This is an interesting question. I mentioned this on my original post and the more I think of it, there can’t be ‘vetting’ for public information. If the information in a press release is damaging then they wouldn’t put it out. The idea of a press release is that the information has been cleared by people to be sent to the public.

There should be a mechanism for letting people get to this information though. Again, it is public information isn’t it? This would alleviate whatever sense of them being overrun by requests.

I made it clear that I wasn’t treated poorly by the Lieutenant on the phone. He was very respectful and told me he had to check with the City Attorney on this. Maybe that’s all the vetting that needs to be done. We will see.

Now to some of my wonderful reader emails.

How can you call out another blog for being irresponsible. You have been on the block for 3 months now and you steal stories from Claycord all the time.

The point of the post was to point out blogger have rights, not single out any specific local blog that has gone off the reservation and also to say that as more local blogs pop up that we need to act responsibly. I never mentioned any site specifically because the Lieutenant didn’t say. Maybe it’s safe to assume who he was talking about but there are more than a few local blogs covering Concord.

As for stealing stories, show me something. I write my own content. I get ideas from other news sites, mainstream and blogs then I write about it. I do not steal stories. Claycord has my number and I can be reached whenever he has an issue and there have been instances, but never because of stolen content.

Do you hate the Concord Police? Why don’t you just leave the city then.

I do not want to make anything more complex for the CPD. I have stated before that I have nothing but respect for people who wear the uniform. I have been in their shoes. Will there be times something happens within the CPD worth writing about. Yes. Will you hear me bash the entire CPD on it. No. I think the community needs to support their police force and at the same time we should hold them accounable to being honorable just as they hold us accountable to follow the laws.

Just as I was about to shut down for the night, I saw this comment on the original post and I got renewed faith in the world.

I got to this post from Eye on Blogs. I must say that there must be some distaste for your site based on the comments but they seem completely unsubstantiated. You keep up the good work and I enjoy your writing style and not just looking at quick posts of 3 sentences. You put work into what you write and it shows. I have no idea how much traffic you get but if you keep writing like this and the other posts I have read, you could be on your way to bigger things.

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