Warning: The following post is Ypsi-centric. If you don’t live in the tiny hamlet of Ypsilanti, Michigan, you might want to skip this post and move on to something a bit less regional…
I had an idea this morning as I was eating my oatmeal and I wanted to run it by you and see what you thought. Here it is What if a few of us who run Ypsi-based websites that cover local issues and politics came together once a month to host an event where we invited local politicians, and/or other people doing things of interest in the community, to address us as a group and answer our questions?
Im envisioning it to be something like the Chamber of Commerces Morning Edition series, but skewed to a much younger, dare I say cooler, demographic. Maybe this is dangerous territory, trying to equate our collective local readership with the members of the Chamber, but I think the comparrison might be legitimate. I think it very well might be the case that our readers are a demographic deserving equal attention At any rate, I was thinking that if a few of us came together and if we represented even as few as ten people, we could probably get a local politician to sit down with us at the Bomber to discuss issues that we felt were important, like taxes, the Water Street project, the state of the buildings on Michigan Ave, etc At the very least, I think we should attempt it once.
If anyone else is up for this, let me know and Ill find a date, invite the Mayor (or someone else), arrange it with the Bomber (or somewhere else), and issue a press release that we can all link to from our sites. Im thinking that we could, between ourselves, our mates, our friends and our local readers, easily get ten to fifteen people Of course, in the back of my mind, Im thinking that this could be replicatable in every town across America that has one of more blogs dealing, even tangentially, with local issues. Im thinking that Breakfast with the Bloggers could be a national franchise Of course, there are a lot of details to work out (i.e. if we charged $10 a breakfast for a set menu and we made a few dollars, we could then invest the proceeds in charitable work in the community), but I just wanted to float the general idea to see if anyone else might be interested Let me know what you think.
One Comment
I was at the Sidetrack yesterday and I did speak briefly with Linda. (Who was it that saw me?) She somehow knows who I am. She came over to my table and said, I know who you are. You need to come and talk to me. Ill buy the beer. I told her that Id come back another time She must read our sites I suspect, Hillary, that shed make you the same offer if she knew who you and Steve were. (You should wear Seat of the Revolution and The Bunker t-shirts.)
As for getting politicians to meet with us local bloggers, I dont think that it would be that difficult, as long as we dont start out asking to meet with our state senators. I imagine that if we approach town council people though, and explain to them how large our audiences are, that theyll agree to take an hour to meet with us. Ive spoken with the Mayor a few times and weve gotten along well (and she married you and Steve), so I think that shed say, OK if we asked her first. So, thats what Id suggest.