"A Little Bird Told Me"

My mother knew everything that was happening in our town growing up (especially where I was, who I was with and what I did!) When asked, she'd just say, "A little bird told me."

Well, I've been thinking about this and yes, of course, the "little birds" on the Dunwoody grapevine are alive and well, but one of the things that is increasingly concerning me is the availability of accurate, up-to-date news reporting in our City. We have one media outlet in our city of 42,000 people, the Crier. I like the Crier. I read the Crier. But not until I started attending City Council meetings and other politically-charged things around Dunwoody did I realize how very slanted the paper is. No surprise there; journalism by its very nature requires a point of view, even when the reporter attempts to be as objective as possible. The mere coverage of one story over another represents an opinion.

The problem? The lack of other voices and viewpoints. Okay, here is the moment when we can all say collectively, "Thank goodness for John." John Heneghan is doing a bang-up job on his sometimes more-than-daily blog updates, but when it took until Monday for me to hear that a Dunwoody child was severely hurt when hit by a person driving a car last Friday, and then I couldn't find any details at all anywhere because John was out of town, that's a sign that we have holes in our communication methods here in Dunwoody. (And, by the way, I found this out when I was at an extraordinarily positive clean-up of the new farmers market location by the post office that involved City Council members, citizens and a board member/artisan from the Dunwoody Farmers Market. The Crier headline this week, Doing the Farmers Work, had, to me, a negative, divisive slant that was not at all representative of the reality I witnessed).

And so, here is what I am personally trying to do. I'm tweeting on Twitter (updates are posted in the sidebar of this blog--if you are getting this blog via email, tap in to the actual blog as often as you want since I'm continually adding and changing things). I'm still figuring out how best to use this tool, but I like how John links to his blog posts (I'm doing this on Facebook), and I like how Farmer D gives quick updates on the sustainability actions he is taking. (Here is his latest: Interviewed with the City of Suwanee about setting up an urban organic farm & community garden. Very cool project. I hope we get it.)

I am also asking, begging, more voices to come to the forefront. The AJC is laying off reporters left and right. Our own Crier has revealed itself to be limited. Even Thaddeus Osbourned Dabell has stopped peppering our community with thought-provoking alternative ways of seeing what's happening. As far as I can see, we have five voices (in addition to those at the Crier) publishing with some semblance of regularity here in Dunwoody: John, me, Donna Nall, Bob Fiscella, and the strangely anonymous Dunwoody Police Watch person or people. The citizen account of this week's City Council meeting, posted on John's blog (of course!), is a fresh, opinionated first-person account from a different perspective. We need MORE of this. We need YOU!

If you have an interest in citizen reporting, please consider:

1. Starting a blog. It is easy and free (and only 10 bucks if you get a custom domain name, without the "blogger" in the URL). Go to www.blogger.com. Sign in and click "Create a blog."

2. Joining Twitter and giving updates relating to our city as often as you can stand to do so. Once every day or two works for me, but Farmer D updates several times a day, especially when he builds another garden (he seems to be putting in a community, school, city or personal vegetable garden every single day of the week).

3. Reading and posting on the City of Dunwoody website's Community Discussion Board.

4. Getting in on the action at our social networking site.

5. Finding out how Radio Sandy Springs is doing what they are doing and considering spearheading the formation of a radio or television station for Dunwoody.

6. Proposing new ideas and trying new things. Technology offers lots of tools we can use to connect and share information.

The more voices we have, the more chances we have of hearing and evaluating different points of view and finding the collective truths that can make a difference in helping our city take positive, sustainable steps forward.