RTD’s “Community Blogs”?

John Sarvay of Buttermilk and Molasses offers a nice editorial on the Times Dispatch’s article about their own “community blogs”, published today.

The 11 online community sites at inRich.com. While it would be easy (and completely appropriate) to wonder where the pitch was six months ago when the sites were launched, or lament their relatively dismal performance-to-date, my inner optimist hopes that the TD’s community pages find their footing.

I happen to agree with John, based on my own input on his website.

In addition, John Murden, creator of CHPN.net and, pretty much, the background code implementor for most of the community blogs posted insightful input on his blog:

These astroturf blogs of theirs have completely ignored the fact that there are actual thriving community sites, representing the distinct and diverse neighborhoods of the city.

They are instead pimping their unused and unfriendly fake-ass blogs as a great innovation. Check it out: the RTD has a Richmond Community blog here, with no posts since August 23rd. The stale posts that are there do not allow comments. They’ve thrown at least 8 months and probably a decent budget at the idea, and this is what the Times-Dispatch can do?