Three elections. A new president. Same-sex marriage rights granted and taken away. It's been quite a year. And the Citizen Voices contributors have blogged their way through it all with great aplomb and candor.
Now that the election is over, it's time to say farewell to the Citizen Voices blog. I'm sad to see this project laid to rest. We started this blog because we wanted to see the election from your perspectives. We wanted to get away from the usual punditry, and find out what you, the public, were thinking about the elections.
I am honored to have worked with our seven "Citizen Voices": Alma , Candace , Chris , Chuck , Jessica , Steven and Trina . I thank these talented and passionate writers for their time, dedication, enthusiasm and honesty. And I thank you, the community of readers and commenters, for participating in our experiment in civic dialogue. We love that many of you have voiced your opinions as actively as our regular bloggers to become part of the Citizen Voices dialogue. (Speaking of which - if you haven't taken our survey yet, please do so. We'd love to hear from you. And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Public Media Innovation Fund, which helped pay for the project, wants to know what you thought of our little experiment in online democracy.)
We set out to learn how to bring together diverse opinions in an interesting and engaging way. We think we succeeded. So much, that we plan to do this again. Have ideas for topics? Leave a comment below. Otherwise, check back with us for our next iteration of "citizen journalism" in the coming months.
Matthew C. Scallon
November 19, 2008 at 06:16 PM
Je quitte ma planette.
Shauna from CA
November 20, 2008 at 11:10 PM
I enjoyed reading many of the blogs, but especially found myself being a big fan of Matthew Scallion. I would read the bloggers comments, and be thinking of what I could say in response--and then scroll down to see that Matthew had already more or less expressed my own opinion. What I loved most, though, was that he would do it with such a calm and diplomatic tone, that even those who vehemently disagreed with him would usually end up, in the end, wishing him well. So it seems only fitting that when I scrolled down this time, there was Matthew's comment.
I hope that if this "experiment" is attempted again, Matthew C. Scallion will have a blog of his own, or at least, keep commenting on those who do. I really enjoyed his respectful way of expressing a dissenting opinion.
