For any who say that blogging is no more interesting or useful than photocopied shopping lists, go and read Garret’s superb post on the dangerous, profit-all-cost effort by the oil and gas industry to ignore residents’ drinking water safety as well as the local economy in order to tap some deposits that may or may not be worth the effort.
This post is full of the insight and analysis that would do any newspaper proud but is rarely seen in “professional” journalism in this era of corporatized media. Garret went to a public meeting hosted by a smaller energy company acting as the spearhead for its bigger brethren. He listened to the questions and objections posed by his fellow townsfolk as well as the company’s responses and actually evaluated all of it, going beyond the rhetoric and comparing words to actions and past behaviors.
Thanks Garret. The phrase ‘holding feet to the fire’ comes to mind as the best description of what you wrote, something that the Woodward/Bernstein revolution was supposed to bring to journalism in the ’70s but never actually delivered.
(Um, Webbies judges? You best be looking G’s way come awards time.)
BillSaysThis 