Yes, we are still here, James, and thanks for noticing! - Granite Grok

Yes, we are still here, James, and thanks for noticing!

Every Friday (pretty much), James Pindell at WMUR Political Scoop does his Up and Down for the past week; given that it’s New Year’s, he swapped the timeline for the year’s span; in his Down side, he had this:

Local political blogosphere: With Dean Barker no longer running the day to day of Blue Hampshire, and with Red Hampshire gone, the blogosphere is less robust, is not growing, and is not driving the conversation like they were. At least Granite Grok got a face lift.

Well, at least thanks for noticing! And I also note: we’re still here, we have no plans to go away, and RINOs and Statists will still hate us and get annoyed by us.  Yes, like RH, many sites that started out around the same time we did have gone away or the passion has flamed out…..blogging takes a lot of passion to do well and it requires discipline to make it work.  Unlike others that tried it simply as a way to earn a living, this is our avocation (serious obsession?), not our vocation.  Being a full time political blogger is not easy to do, at least on the Right side of the blogosphere.   Financially, all I hope to do is pay the server bill and acquire the technology that will allows us to extend into different areas – more podcasts, more live streaming, more video, and whatever the next big tech thing coming down the line that will enable us to get our message out there.  And getting out the message transcends the technology – the goal is to influence people no matter the media.

Thus, I would tend to agree with the assessment, at least in part.

At one time, setting up a blog site was the height of technology and it took serious work and discipline to be worthwhile and to get noticed.  But also at that time, blog sites were the only places to go for opinions not from the MSM and there were far more readers than bloggers – again, not everyone had the technical skill-set or the drive to get set up and provide fresh content all the time.

However, the same Internet “disruptive technologies” that allowed blog sites like GraniteGrok, RedHampshire, and BlueHampshire to become “the new thing” in NH political conversation was then joined by an even more disruptive force – social media.  From Twitter to tumblr to MySpace (sorta) and Facebook, it relieved the burden of site setup and the need for constant content – a democratization of opinion sharing for a much wider set of folks.  It allowed for easier conversations between groups, with discussion groups flashing in and out of existence and often, in real time.  More conversations and involvement among more people – what could be bad about that?

Has it supplanted blogging?  No, but it has changed where blogging is in the hierarchy of “conversing”.  In effect, instead of having to come to RH, BH, and the ‘Grok to get news and yak, we can provide items and issues which then will circulate in the social media cloud, and perhaps use the social media to act as a funnel for the longer type posts that are still needed but are not a good fit for social media sites.  I look at this as just changing with the times – perhaps a lessening of emphasis on the ‘Grok itself but a broadening of how we Groksters get our message out and get others to talk about it.  Sure, GraniteGrok is “my baby”, but it is only a way, as I said earlier, to get the message out.  And if something else comes along that’s better or complements the site well, well, we’ll try that too!

But, James, how DO you like the face lift?

>