Web Shines Light on Government

Guess it is about time I explained what Patch and other types of news services are all about.

For me they are the modern way of disseminating the news. Paper newspapers are going out or at least seeing their sales going down. That's because so many folks simply fire up the computer and find out whats going on.

In the case of Patch you can find out all kinds of local and sometimes national news. With the addition of columns like mine, you also get analysis just like the regular paper news. Not only that, you get to enter your own views on the subjects covered. So it becomes citizen news. 

You also get this news almost instantly and they cover small towns and areas every day. For some folks this is hard to get used to. It is obvious the folks at and county court houses that never received much attention fall in to  that category.

Powder Springs falls into this category. When I was on the Council little of what we did ever found itself into the news so that citizens would find out. There was no conspiracy; it was just the fact that we had no local news outlet.

The MDJ and Atlanta Journal-Constitution would once in a while cover some things like floods and such. But City Hall goings-on, like I am now covering, just never happened. That's why you read some of these "commentaries" from these folks and except for Chris Wizner go without names.

How do I know? It's easy, they simply know too much often repeating such words and phrases that I heard for years. Also, very few non City Hall folks know the "inside baseball" information that these folks seem to write about or misrepresent.

Terms like "bitter" were often heard by one particular elected official for everyone who was a council member or otherwise worked there and is now critical or really just telling stories "out of school", at least in that official's view.

It is difficult for officials who are used to getting no scrutiny to suddenly find someone who can anylyze what is happening. The only thing that they can do is cast some kind of doubt on the sincerity of the person writing the column.

Except for the Council Member cited above, none of them really address the matters being discussed in the column. If they were in a real 12th grade debate, they would lose for straying off of topic and going to name calling.

I am pleased to find out that some of my columns are actually bringing about some real reforms. The Closed meetings are shorter and mostly stick to topic. Citizens who care know more about what the functions of a city are and are not (see on civics).

Persons can now debate such things as , , getting some perspective on and even finding out about such exciting things as and !

Persons who are upset about my writings, such as our elected officials, should get used to this, everywhere. This is not going away.

For those, many of my former collegues, who now think of me as the enemy should remember this famous saying written by Niccolo Machiavelli:
      "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer"  The Prince.

Thanks for reading,

Tom Bevirt