I thought of an idea. It is actually a different approach to an idea I had last fall. Here’s the original idea.
I’ve always questioned polls used by the media. When they’re printed or shown on TV, they always make the questions appear simple, but there are many tricks to manipulating polls. There are many articles about questionable polls in the New York Times. I thought it might be interesting to duplicate polls by questioning Madison residents. No adjustments or deceptive questions. I’d simply ask the question exactly how it was printed in the original poll. It could serve to measure how Madison measures up to polled population and the accuracy of the original poll. But when I stated thinking more about it, the logistics would take a lot of time on my behalf and I’m not reimbursed for time spent working on my blog.
So I rethought the idea. I like the idea of blogging locally. Not necessarily avoiding national or global issues, but looking at them from a local perspective. That’s when I thought of my new idea. Something I’ve never seen on a blog.
It’s not a new concept. It’s in nearly every newspaper in the country, even The Onion. Asking people on the street a question and then printing their response and their picture. I thought that would be an interesting blog entry once a week. It’s certainly requires questioning far fewer people than a full poll. It might also serve to make more people aware and interested in blogs. After all, if some blogger walks up to you on the street, takes your picture, asks you a question and then tells you it will be published on the internet, won’t you check it out?
But that will have to wait until after the weekend. I’ll be going to California to visit my sister and enjoy the beach. Please feel free to give me some feedback about my idea. I think blogging is a great element to the internet and deserves more recognition. I was glad to see two collaborative blogs from Madison mentioned on the news yesterday. We’re the people and we have a voice, whatever political issue you support.
Good idea, it certainly is ambitious and unique to the blogosphere. Good luck, I’m looking forward to seeing it.
Comment by Jib — Saturday 28 May, 2005 @ 10:20
That’s a great idea. I think getting people’s names and pictures for your blog might be somewhat difficult, but if you can do that, it will be a really cool thing for a blogger to do.
Comment by Bryan Smith — Saturday 28 May, 2005 @ 19:16