Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Rested after a month off and reflective on the Podunkian portal

It's been almost a month since our last posting on our Podunkian portal, a much required and truth be told enjoyable respite from the cobbling together of items of interest to our faithful readers.

As has been the case in the past when we take our annual siesta from blogging we have taken the opportunity to ponder what direction we wish to see the blog travel in for the next little while, examining what items worked, which ones didn't go in the direction we had hoped and toss around some ideas as to what we might wish to add as far as content may go.

Blogging takes a fair amount of time out of the day, finding items of interest,  putting those items into some form of entertaining and informative content and then offering them up for review and comment.

Sometimes the task becomes a chore or you suffer a sudden brain cramp that slows down the proceess, at those times blogging is at times a frustrating thing.  At other times however we receive a comment or two about our work to let us know that the efforts are appreciated, a welcome bit of response in lieu of payment.

Since the blog began we have never solicited revenue for the site, or received compensation for our work. Nor are we beholden to any advertisers which may in some way impact on the project that we offer up for review. It in effect has been a hobby, providing links and an archive of sorts to some of the events of our little corner of the world.

With a month's rest under our belt, we're looking to resuming our work but with a more reasonable time allocation towards it, thus some of our past features which took too much of our time from Podunkian items will no longer appear. Such things as our daily economic review or our Sunday brunch to name a few while enjoyable to put together, were time consuming and in the end probably not valuable on the ongoing theme of Podunk.

We return to our efforts with more of a focus on the items we find of particular interest or having an impact on this region, to that end we may reduce some of the opinion and editorial content to offer up more timely delivery of those items.

That's not to say that the blog won't feature opinion anymore, as that would defeat the purpose of the journal, but rather we won't wander around tossing out comments on every single item that crosses our portal, instead we'll pick and choose those topics that hold the most interest to us and perhaps to your readers.

To be honest, some of the local issues seem to be on a never ending loop, little change and even less developments seem to be the main talking point of them at times, and after awhile you can only say so much without becoming repetitive. So unless there is something of particular value to add to the debate, we'll just offer up the latest developments and leave it at that.

We will continue to offer up the city council review, the agenda, attendance and such, something we think is of value to our archives, likewise other key Podunkian items from the past will remain in the archives, we will however be weeding out some of the other aspects of the blog as we work on the redesign.

To get back on track we'll pick up with the developments of this week, we will catch up to the last month of items from Podunk Below the Masthead and such as we go along, all will be archived in their usual spots so amateur Podunkian historians and current affairs junkies will find them in place as time allows.  Check back to our Podunk Below the Masthead Archives as we play catch up with our time away.

So having slurped on our final slushie of the summer, we're going to get back to the computer and back to work chronicling the developments of Podunk, though on a less time demanding schedule as in the past.

We don't think you'll notice any real gaps in the delivery of our items and for Podunkians the concentration on matters of importance to our area could make the blog even more of a useful stop on your daily wanderings of this wired world of ours.

As always if you have an idea for the blog or a suggestion as to what is or isn't working, drop us a line at podunkcan@yahoo.ca


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I enjoy reading your posts, and I do check out your links to economic news around the world. I can see that it takes a lot of your time, so I understand why you might not want to do it anymore. Any chance you might consider a scaled-down version of the economic news? Maybe only three or four links rather than a dozen or more? In my world you have replaced the Daily News, along with Muskeg Press. Keep up the good work!