Jackson Hole 'community' could learn from new IF site

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

By Henry Sweets

Is there a fresh breeze blowing in Idaho Falls? Could the town we know for shopping, Mormonism, and miles of irrigated farmland finally be flashing a seedier and more exciting underbelly?

Go check out IdahoFallz.com. This is a new community forum, designed and maintained by a media entrepreneur and political activist who goes by the name Joe Vandal, who doesn’t seem to be afraid to tell it like it is. In one post, titled “How to Improve Southeast Idaho News Environment,” Vandal ripped into the Post Register, the region’s daily newspaper, for monopolistic business practices and called for an alternative paper to offer some competition. The open discussion on the piece became so scathing that Roger Plothow, editor and publisher of the Post Register, had to write in to defend himself.

In another recent article about proposed restrictions at high school dances, Vandal weighs the pros and cons of teenagers being able to “grind” and “grope,” and decides that ultimately kids should not be able to explore their sexuality on the taxpayers bill, but rather “engineer those moments alone,” using their own resources.

Vandal’s posts are professional and thoughtful, even if they are colorful and passionate. The forums deal with the gamut of local political and consumer issues. The site is heavily peppered with Google ads – a sign that regional businesses respect the traffic this site sees.

This site is an example of the impact one individual can have in a community hungry for shared information. Political and social change can be filtered through grassroots community input, or be left to unchecked speculation by investors and elected officials. Maybe Idaho Falls’ beautiful historic downtown would not feel so empty and eerie if residents had been able to funnel development away from the strip malls and stoplights.

Our valley has a huge population of unsure workers with needs and businesses desperate for labor. People band together to raise tens of thousands of dollars to fight over development and housing, while impassioned ski bums can be heard in bars all over Teton County doing nothing about it. Low-bracket Jacksonites continue to be broke and not take a hint from huge national stories, like striking writers and stagehands demanding consistent compensation in sketchy labor markets.

Websites like TetonAT.com and TheSnaz.com offer a chance for us to gather for action sports and gnarliness, but JHUnderground.com – the closest thing we have to IdahoFallz.com – does not see robust community involvement. Only time will tell how our local issues will play out, and who can make their meek voice speak more loudly than that of money.

PERMALINK:
Jackson Hole 'community' could learn from new IF site | Planet JH News Article: County News

Reader Comments

I'm sorry I was not available to do that interview for your piece, I was delayed in verifying that you were writing for this publisher. I appreciate your remarks though. Here are a few of my opinions after running IFz for over two years now. Can anyone start and run one of these blog sites? Yes and no. Yes it's fairly inexpensive to buy a domain name and host space (about $300 for two years), and yes there are easy-to-use site scripts like WordPress or Drupal. However you will quickly find you want to know HTML and PHP to do any customizations or adaptations for your local needs. It is important to have a source for locals to discuss local issues, which should be alternative from the local mainstream media outlets. Don't have delusions of taking over the world, but strive for balancing your community by giving leverage to folks who normally are not heard. To write things like I have about our community requires passion for your community. You have to want to make your community better, and you have to have some understanding of the history and workings. You don't have to be an expert though. I think you should also strive for political diversity and balance. I personally hold a balance of liberal and conservative viewpoints, and I think that has helped foster a healthy balance of viewpoints at IFz. I think it is also important to learn how to accept that your opinion may be wrong, and be willing to publicly admit you've changed your mind after public discussion has taken place. The problems I see with that JHUnderground.com is that it appears to be a clearly liberal site, so immediately I'd be weary of discussing conservative issues. It also links to the site owner's personal portfolio, and I think that discourages people from publishing articles on the same site, unless they are also given personal portfolio spaces. Unfortunately you also may want a snappier website name. I couldn't get IdahoFalls.com so I got the next best thing. There are an overwhelming number of SEO tactics and campaigns you can try to increase your Google search engine rankings, but the best advice is the most difficult: simply publish quality and quantity. Publish a lot about local topics, and eventually you will get linked a lot and will earn comments. Good luck, please feel free to ask me any questions about running a community website, and do stop by IdahoFallz.com and feel free to participate in our discussions since we know a lot of you JHers spend a lot of dough in our community. Tell us what you want to see in Idaho Falls.
Joe Vandal

My last comment display is a perfect example of the technical know-how required for running a community site. I hit the enter key and created separate paragraphs in that comment, but you see it got published as one big paragraph blob. Doing this reduces the readability of comments which in turn reduces the number of comments which reduces your discussions. It's not difficult to change the code to respect those comment paragraphs, but it takes someone willing to do the code changes to make the site more usable. I hope PJH changes that to make their site better. 8^)
Joe Vandal