I hereby issue a hearty welcome to a slew of new bloggers, all associated with the newspaper’s new community blog, TheColumbiaRecord.com. I do this with slightly mixed feelings, as this is competition I can ill afford. Some of these people (if not all of them) are already better at this than I am. I hope they will only spur me on to make my blog that much better. Either that, or the pressure will provide that last little straw necessary to make me crack, and you’ll see me running naked through the streets screaming "The Visigoths are coming!" in Esperanto. Which to you will appear normal, but I promise there is a distinction here somewhere.

Anyway, I thought the most neighborly way I could greet these interlopers would be to run Cindi’s column about them, right here on our stage, with handy links.

So here it is:

TheColumbiaRecord.com will change
how you think about bloggers
By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Associate Editor
    BLOGGERS, like the talking heads on TV “news” channels, tend to be loud-mouthed know-it-alls on the political extremes who delight in their uninformed ignorance and spew disdain upon the rational among us who actually know what they’re talking about.
    So what in the world are Democratic Rep. James Smith and Republican Rep. Ted Pitts doing writing a blog together? Not as point-counterpoint crazies, but as friends and colleagues providing an “issues-based political dialogue”?
    Well, I can’t say for sure yet; they can’t either: They’ve been brainstorming the idea for the past week, and they’re going to lunch today to sketch out a plan. But I know it’s going to be interesting. It might even help break down some of the partisan barriers that are so poisoning our politics, our government and our society.
    This may be a little bolder than the rest of the offerings, but what James and Ted are doing is typical of the approach you’ll find at TheColumbiaRecord.com, which debuts today as the Midlands’ on-line gathering place.
    Like James and Ted, the folks who are already blogging are people who know what they’re talking about. And contrary to the other cliche about blogging, most of them have little or nothing to say about politics.
    This is no accident. The team at The State who developed TheColumbiaRecord.com set out to create something different from the Wild West of the blogosphere, but also different from the typical newspaper site. We sought out people in our community who are experts in their fields — oftentimes fields that don’t get as much coverage in a newspaper as aficionados seek. We recruited some people you know. But we also realized that our community is full of interesting, intelligent, knowledgeable people whom most of us have never heard of, and so we went looking for them.
    The first such person we found (with the help of State food reporter Allison Askins) was cookbook author and culinary instructor Susan Slack, who is now sharing her original recipes and her knowledge to help the rest of us learn to cook like a pro.
    I knew Kathy Plowden had the personality to be a great blogger when she told me about how she had transformed herself from “the person who killed artificial plants” into a master gardener.
    Arborist Jay Clingman heard about the project through word of mouth and contacted us with a full-blown proposal of how he would guide and moderate a dialogue on “trees and forests, timberland, wildlife preserves, wetlands, urban forests, tree problems and even tree and forest politics”; it was a topic we never would have thought to include on the blog site, but what he’s written so far is fun reading.
    Actor/storyteller Darion McCloud, whom State reporter Pat Berman described as “among the most open, enjoyable and quotable people I’ve talked to in the past couple of years,” plans to talk about a bit of everything as he seeks to integrate the arts into modern life.
    And the list goes on, from astronomy buff Hap Griffin and ultra-marathoner Ray Krolewicz to Lisa Yanity, a guidance counselor at A.C. Flora High School and Army Reserve captain who’s serving in Afghanistan, and Dr. Leo Walker, who is integrating non-traditional approaches with traditional medicine to help readers achieve “not merely the absence of disease but an optimum state of physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being.”
    Of course, you’ll also find politics on TheColumbiaRecord.com, and readers of these pages will find familiar names: Three of the best writers from our old “community columnists” op-ed initiative — political consultant Bob McAlister, systems development specialist Mike Cakora and hydrologist Frank Chapelle — are blogging. (Go to the public square and find out, in his fabulous first posting, how Bob discovered that fellow blogger Brad Warthen isn’t into porn, or what Mike thinks of David Wilkins’ use of the queen’s English. Hint: Mike’s headline is “Did he really say that?”)
    The site also includes Columbia City Council members Daniel Rickenmann and Tameika Isaac Devine, the Columbia Urban League’s J.T. McLawhorn and Brandy Pinkston, who runs the state Consumer Affairs Department and is offering tips and answering questions on scams, pitfalls and urban myths. And, as soon as they work out the details, James and Ted.
    The blogs are just one part of TheColumbiaRecord.com. There’s also a place for people to send in their news about their schools, churches, neighborhoods, clubs, hobbies — whatever interests them. I think that’s going to create exciting and useful community conversations.
    But that’s just what I think. What I know is that the bloggers are great. As we’ve read the early postings, my colleagues at work, and my new blogger friends, have come away time and time again amazed by the great writing and the thoughtfulness of the postings, and by what we’ve learned. It’s changed the way a lot of us think about blogging. I think it will do the same for you.
    Ms. Scoppe can be reached at [email protected] or at (803) 771-8571.

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