This is what I’ve come to ask myself as I reflect on my momentary euphoria at putting links to horoscopes, the weather, comics etc on the Home Page of the Newburyport Blog:

Have I gone over to the “dark side,” the commercial side, by blatantly linking to CNN and the Weather Channel instead of my fellow struggling bloggers and even my own local media?

Or is this a case of “blogger savvy?” Aspiring to lure local readers to bigger things, in hopes that they might notice the encroaching elements and issues that (in my mind at least) plague their own home town? (Or have I just lost it?)

I’m not a black and white thinker. Multi-determined, probably.

I myself find that I now linger over my own blog, checking the weather, then my horoscope and finally finding out what Doonesbury could possibly be up to. I find that I actually forgo checking out the 20 something “stud-muffins,” that may be “very easy on the eyes” at the Personals.

Yes, a quick check at Sports. A wander over to the National News. (It’s fun.) And then I crawl back to the warmth of my own sometimes myopic blogging of my own small New England burg.

I think to myself, why not? Newspapers have a broad swatch of whatever and then lure readers to dangle over, while checking out TV Listings and the Comics. Why not moi?

Why not do it backwards? Have a small blog-about, about whatever and then lure readers with the possibilities of “stud-muffins” at the Personals and “laughter” at Comics and “euphoria and agony” at Sports.

In fact, I wonder why I had never thought of this sooner. Why not blend hot-stuff major mindsets and things with small city, local blogging?

One of my frustrations is that so many people in Newburyport, MA find out about “important stuff,” let’s say like the proposed development at the Wheelwright property, a year after the whole thing has gotten well under way.

I checked, the first blog entry on the SOS on the Wheelwright Property was way back in January 2006. The second major blog entry no less.

Where have these people been? Some of them have been reading the New York Times and the New Yorker for goodness sakes. All good stuff, but nothing in there about the encroaching dilemmas of Newburyport, MA. How will they know? Or at least how will they know a little sooner or the vague possibility of a whole lot sooner?

Or worse yet, they haven’t been reading much of anything, if anything at all.

So my little theory and experiment. A brief glance might inform about some of Newburyport’s concerns, whatever. And then, yippee, fun and serious stuff can be linked to, and hence, it might be worth a visit to the Newburyport Blog.

So I will be interested to see how the “Newburyport Blog goes national” thing goes. And at the very least, I’ll be entertaining myself, “dark side” or no. (Plus, the frogs love it. And, yes, this is the deciding of all important, possible deciding factors; factual, fun stuff for frogs.)

Mary Eaton
Newburyport