Louis Uchitelle is a New York Times reporter and he has written an excellent book about the consequences of layoffs, The Disposable American, that begins by profiling The Stanley Works.
The decline of the Stanley Works in New Britain is the focus of the book's first chapter. A major part of the first chapter is available on the Washington Post web site. You may have to register to read it.
When I started working at The Herald in 1981, manufacturing jobs were rapidly disappearing. Stanley became the last of the old time hardware companies to continue in this city. What Uchitelle documents is the gradual dismantling of Stanley’s manufacturing workforce.
Uchitelle interviewed people in New Britain, former Stanley Works officials as well as employees of this company. It's an eye-opening book for what it says about New Britain and the broader downsizing trend.
Thanks to NB Politicus, the work of John McNamara, for the shout-out and kind words, but especially for his thoughts about this topic: the importance of community journalism.
I was in New Britain over the holiday visiting two of my favorite people, Dan and Arlene who run Leaves & Pages. And as usual, people stopped in to have coffee and chat. I really love that place. The atmosphere is always friendly, the conversation is continuous and that's all due to Dan and Arlene, two of the happiest people I know. I really miss New Britain sometimes.
One woman came into the coffee shop and a topic that came up was The Herald's coverage about a particular event. I don't quite recall the details of the specific coverage, but she expressed unhappiness over The Herald's failure to mention a noteworthy accomplishment by a group of New Britain High School students. She felt that the newspaper focused too much of its news on reporting on students who got into trouble. This is common complaint for all newspapers, but that is not to say that there isn’t merit to her complaint.
I asked her if she raised her concerned with The Herald's editors and she told me that she did but got nowhere. Despite her efforts, I don’t think she ever reached an editor.
The woman doesn’t blog and I thought her concern would be a perfect topic for a blog post.
There doesn't seem to be too many blogs in New Britain that are focused on neighborhood, community and broader city issues. That will change in time. Blogging has only started and people are just beginning to realize how empowering it is. I have no doubt that over the next few years, many people will start blogs about New Britain.
NB Politicus has a nice round-up and link list. (My link list is a mess. I was trying something with blogroller and it's not turning out to my liking)
In DC, where I live, neighborhood blogging is still relatively new but catching on. More and more people are writing about things in their neighborhood, police issues, store openings, zoning matters -- anything of note. Take a look at my DC blog, dcblogs.comand especially the live feed page. The live feed is the AP wire for DC; it's a way for anyone in this community to share. My friend, Tom Fausel, who is a former New Britain resident, runs ctweblogs.com. He built the feed engine.
This brings me back to the concern about The Herald's coverage. Thoughtful feedback about coverage will get noticed by reporters and editors. The staff at The Herald is part of a larger corporate chain and its managers don't have the ability to do some of things that people would like to see the newspaper do, and that's namely add more reporters to broaden coverage. But, that said, an alert blogging community can do a lot to help shape the newspaper's coverage. Even if reporters and editors do not respond directly to what is written, I’ll bet almost anything that blog posts are read.
Newspapers can do a lot to help local blogging communities by providing the raw information that neighborhood bloggers need to assess the impact of, for instance, a zoning or economic development issue being debated in the city.
That is not to say the local bloggers can't begin to provide live coverage. The state's Freedom of Information Laws give a right to all citizens. Residents can request city documents and publish those documents on their blogs. They can attend meetings and provide their own reports on issues of importance to them. They can shoot video, upload it to Youtube, and embedd a live video feed on their blog. Citizens have enormous power today.
Here's something else: Bloggers can and should insist that the city put more material online and make it accessible. That's an important aspect of community journalism.
There's a lot that New Britain residents can do to create alternatives to newspapers, and all it takes are minor contributions by many bloggers to build, in total, a new media source for New Britain.
