Russ Steele
The news exploded on the local blogosphere today when Zuri Berry at his Union Blog announced that Russ Steele and George Rebane are going to become regular monthly columnist at the Union! Oh my, the emotional responses were equally explosive. What do those two conservatives have up their sleeve asked a local blogger?
Today, George and I sat down with the publisher Jeff Ackerman and his webs team Zuri Berry and Tom Harbert. We agreed to submit monthly opinion columns for publication in the Union, in return for bylines and links to our blogs. We also so agreed to share our daily blog posts with the Sunday Edition of The Union, thus expanding the Sunday editions local content. The Union gets to pick and choose the daily posts, with comments they think best fits the Sunday Edition. All the columns and blog posts will be our opinions, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We will be independent community voices.
What do we get from this agreement? We get to expand our reach to segments of the community who are not regular visitors of our blogs NC Media Watch and Rebane's Ruminations. Our hope is that regular Union readers will find our views on local and California issues are of interest, and visit our blogs on a regular basis. It is a win-win for both The Union and local bloggers.
Not everyone is happy about our new arrangement, Jeff Pelline is worried about our independence. See Zuri's defense in the comments. It is true I have often been critical of The Union, as has George, but our goals were always a more robust community newspaper. A local newspaper that will enjoy a long successful future. However, to remain a robust voice in the community The Union must adapt to a digital world. A world that is going more mobile as readers use their iPhones, iPod Touches, Blackberies, and Palm Treos to read the news and find local products.
It is highly likely that George and I will have more suggestions that the Union may, or may not, adopt. They are part of a much larger organization, with Swift Communications the mother ship in Reno. Changes have to be sold, coordinated and implemented. A time consuming process, in a stand alone origination, it takes forever in a larger organization like Swift, with newspapers in multiple communities across the west.
I wrote a twice monthly Internet column for several years and an opinion column for a year in the 90s for the Union. I am looking forward to writing a monthly column for The Union again, and sharing the stage with George. His thoughts on this new venture can be found at Rebane's Ruminations here.
