From: http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2008/12/whats-killing-pittsburgh-bloggers.html
What's Killing the Pittsburgh Bloggers? Five Gone in Five Months:
In December 2008, The Burgh Report, a mostly local-political blog, shut down. In this posting, the author says "Maintaining my anonymity was too much stress to deal with."
In November 2008, TheBurghBlog (Pittgirl) shut down ...
October 2008, Pittsblog shut down due to time constraints.
Sept 2008, The Conversation shut down due to time demands.
August 2008, Teacher. Wordsmith. Madman. shut down.
This is not a tragedy on the scale of three Americans a day dying in Iraq/Afghanistan. Doesn't even come close. But it is a negative. A few inchoate mumblings:
If bloggers are supposed to be part of the new media, and bloggers shut down when they develop a beat/niche/groove, what does that mean for public discourse? What does it mean for democracy?
I've ruefully said before that Pittsburgh is a "used to be" town. Used to be steel mills, used to be jobs, used to be a mill-hunky work ethic, used to be an airport, used to be a baseball team. How will Pittsburgh become a "City 2.0" if even our blogs are all succumbing to used to be?
