| New Editor at Dogtown |
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| Written by Clay Miller | |
| Wednesday, 06 August 2008 | |
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I, Clay M. Miller, am officially the new editor here at the Dogtown Wire.
I have been "writing" or "copying and pasting", depending on the
circumstances the stories that list the author as
Dogtown Staff for over a week now. That being the case I suppose this means I would have to
identify myself as a journalist, although, right now, it is hard for me
to describe myself in that fashion. As you may have already noticed
from my sometimes questionable grammar, I do not have a large amount of
experience writing for an audience. In fact, in college I did my best
to avoid writing at all costs by majoring in Cell Biology and
Mathematics. However, presently it has become imperative that I learn
to write good; and I will, but it'll take a little while before I
hammer out all the kinks. Right now, I wish for the journalism experience and the writing talent of our former staff writer, DJ Smith, but I know these things will take time and hard work. Without DJ, the Dogtown Wire lacks much of the investigative reporting that it was once able to feature, this is a serious issue that I am addressing, however it will take a little while. In the meantime I am trying to replace some of our quality with breadth of coverage, my current goal is to try to publish around 6 to 9 stories related to North Little Rock a day. Monday-Fridays, weekends will be less. The goal is to create a site where people interested in North Little Rock will go to find breaking news, rather than spending an 10 minutes searching through the daily paper for NLR news or waiting for the weekly paper. We want to keep people interested in what's going on throughout the community. Here's a breakdown of what those stories will be right now:
While I'm doing this I will be learning, as fast as possible, the City and what local issues are important. Eventually when I get more comfortable and know the City better I will be writing more focused original stories and editorials. For now I will focus on community development and building interest in local government. The internet is a great source for building communities to share common interests with such diverse topics from icechewing.iswhaticrave.com to a forum about men's long hair hyperboard. However what the internet lacks are good forums for local neighborhoods and city development. What I believe is the most valuable commodity that I can offer the community is to encourage people to get involved with their neighborhoods and their local government, first of all because it's their money. As a resident or business of North Little Rock you pay taxes and why shouldn't you be as involved with how your taxes are spent locally, but more importantly and even more valuable is creating positive interest in the community and building relationships on common interests. I think the only way for this website to become financially viable is if I am able to sell people on the idea that they should get more involved in the North Little Rock communities and local neighborhoods. To do this I will try to provide an up-to-date source of local information, as well as the fact that every story is a forum on which users are free to communicate. The internet opens up all sorts of possibilities for developing communities, and I look forward to employing the best of my abilities to make North Little Rock better informed, better connected, and a better place to live with your help. Finally, I have to admit that my father, Scott Miller, is the current owner of this site. We are very different people however, and I will do my best to protect the site from having any political or other biases. I do however admire his efforts with community journalism and the Argenta blog he set up after a discussion we had when I was in college about hyperlocalism. I look forward to the challenge of working here and trying to build not only a profitable business, but what I hope will be an important source of information for North Little Rock to help it become a better community. Now I just have to learn how to write a little a better and get my stories out, have a good day out there North Little Rock  7 Comments Write comment
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August 06, 2008