A new way to follow the election
Hey, Edmontonians, I’m happy to announce that EdmontonPolitics.com is live and rocking the Internet.
I guess I should tell you what the heck EdmontonPolitics.com is so you have an idea of why I’m excited.
It’s a municipal and school board election year so I started thinking about doing something big for election night. Then I saw what a team of bloggers was up to down in Calgary with their election. I mentioned the possibilities of Edmonton’s online newsies joining forces to Dave(berta) and, next thing you know, we’ve got a website that will cover the 2010 election.
Talking with Dave Cournoyer and other bloggers, and online types, the energy around the conversation really got me excited. It felt like this was something waiting to be done. And now we’re doing it.
I also like talking about it here, because it makes me think of a new series from B.C’s The Tyee, where they’re highlighting stories from the hyper-local Vancouver Observer. It’s interesting to see how online publications feel fine mentioning others, while I think you’ll be waiting some time before the Sun tells you to check out stories in the Journal.
Anyway, I hope to see EdmontonPolitics.com (or EP.com) be an online source of information, stories, opinions, and fun related to the October elections. While they don’t know it yet, I’m also going to try and recruit a bunch of people I know to write and document the election for us, regardless of them being regular bloggers.
We’re also hoping to break down barriers to political coverage. I know I still struggle with writing information in a way that’s accessible to people not versed in the topic at hand. It’s a problem a lot of reporters have.
So, hopefully we make it easier to know what the hell people are talking about with a glossary of acronyms, buzzwords, and people that will be mentioned in the election. And we’ll always be open to questions because I bet some people don’t vote, because they haven’t studied government since school, and just don’t feel like they know anything. EdmontonPolitics.com aims to include everyone in the discussion and get them voting.
Let me know what you’d like to have explained, or covered, here in the comments or over at EP.com.
