The Tech Edition

April 09, 2008

Blogs give everyman a voice

By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer

MARGATE – There was a time, not that long ago, when talking politics was done face to face or through a letter to the editor.
With the Internet at their fingertips, many people today have turned to blogging as a means to comment on or raise issues.
The weblog format allows virtually every person who has an opinion on an issue or candidate to post that message to a wide audience, and to reach that audience instantly. And there’s no waiting for the next day’s newspaper, or even the evening news, to find out what is happening.
The Margate City Commission election last year gave birth to Cleansweep 2007, a community news website and blog.
“Our plan was not to endorse any one candidate; we were just advocating a whole new administration,” said Cleansweep blog and website creator Doug Donato.
“I think we brought up a lot of issues and provided people who might not like to get up and speak at a meeting an opportunity to talk about what was important,” he said.
He compared it to the community bulletin boards of a generation ago.
“At least for local issues, the blog serves a real purpose,” said Donato. “I am not sure that on a national level it really would work the same, but for our corner of the world it seemed like an effective tool.”
He did not solicit sponsors for the Cleansweep site.
“We were offered sponsorships, but I turned them down,” said Donato.
He explained that frameworks on how to build a blog site are available, but many had banners and advertising that accompany the “free” blog site. Donato finally searched and found one to model that was created by a tech-savvy college student that did not require much financial support.
Launched in late January 2007 for the May 2007 election, Donato found out quickly that being the person responsible for the site took a lot of work and many more hours than he anticipated.
“I could not just set up the site and leave it. I had to check it daily for comments and email that would come in from users having problems with the site. I had a guy who used a Mac and who could not download the application. It took me two hours just to help him with his problem. And that was just one guy.”
Censorship is an issue with blog sites, as today’s desktop commentators struggle with questions weighing the right of free speech against other rights, such as the right to protection from libel.
People shouldn’t have the right to say anything they want on a blog site, he said, but blog content is not governed by the same rules as newspaper or magazine content.
“On our blog site and others, people register and get a handle so that what they write remains anonymous,” said Donato.
“Newspapers and magazines reprint news, so they have to vet information and research to see that it’s correct, but a blog is a place for people to write their feelings,” he said.
As to whether blog participants’ posting anonymously presents a problem, he said it depends on to what degree a person believes in free speech.
“I did not censor, but if I deemed it foul I would take it off, or if the person that it was written about felt it offensive, I would take it down.”
Perhaps the bigger question is, did the blog influence the election, or was it just a forum for discussion to take place?
“I think we set it up so that it gave the residents information, and I think those candidates who were aligned with projects that we opposed, like the groin, might have been hurt by it,” said Donato.
“We were in favor of an elected school board and the town voted it down 2-1, and that might have created a problem too.”
Two of the candidates from the May election said the Cleansweep blog was not a good tool for the election because it allowed people to hide behind a screen name and get personal and bash candidates.
The candidates, who did not want their names to be used in this story, agreed that the blog did have an effect on the commission race – maybe not directly on the outcome, but it changed the way the election was conducted between the candidates and the residents.
Donato said he wasn’t sure whether blogs would become the new neighborhood where ideas are exchanged, but that it is a possibility.
The Cleansweep website with the blog was closed once the results of the May 4 City Commission election were posted. Over the nearly four months it was up and running, Donato said it had well in excess of 150,000 hits.

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