There are wonderful things happening in Forest Park Southeast. More and more smart, dedicated people are joining the effort. In fact this blog was finally started in part due to the great changes coming to The Grove. But, I think it may be just a little too easy for someone to set up a website. A quick search identifies at least half a dozen sites that may pertain to a neighborhood resident.

Here's the quickly assembled list:

• FPSE walking path: http://www.fpsepath.com/
• WU Medical Center Redevelopment Corporation: http://wumc.wordpress.com/
• CWE Neighborhood Security Initiative: http://nsiofcwe.com/default.aspx
• 17th Ward: http://www.17thwardstl.com/
• The Grove Community Improvement District: http://thegrovecid.wordpress.com/
• FPSE Safety and Security: http://fpsesafe.wordpress.com/
• Kings Oak neighborhood: http://stlouis.missouri.org/kingsoak/

The relatively new 17th Ward website does an excellent job keeping tabs on all the committees, initiatives, events and news in FPSE as well as part of the CWE, Kings Oak, Botanical Heights and other 17th Ward locations. They're on twitter as well at http://twitter.com/17thWard. But I can't imagine that a separate website for a walking path or individual security initiative sites serves any beneficial purpose.

The vast majority of neighborhood residents are marginal involved with local activities and often marginally interested in becoming involved. How many will search the Internet and pluck information from half a dozen sites to learn more about their neighborhood? Having information dispersed across multiple (and sometimes out-of-date) websites is counterproductive and a waste of time and effort, resources that are desperately needed to continue to neighborhood's renaissance.

I started this blog as a hobby. I don't like to fish, can't stand golf and have no interest in model railroads. This is what I enjoy. Along the way I continue to meet fascinating people, learn a lot and hopefully introduce some relevant, previously unknown issues to those reading along.

I'm not in the business of challenging the traditional media, but I am aware that I and other bloggers in the St. Louis community sometimes attend events or meetings and learn things that are important to our community and yet not covered by the Post-Dispatch or KWMU, The Beacon, RFT or anyone else. I think that in this case we, as bloggers, add something valuable to the community.

But on those occasions when we blog about a subject or event also covered by the traditional media it is sometimes unclear which coverage offers the best information. In general a writer for say, the Post-Dispatch, is much more professional, more concise and as a result more informative, but sometimes a blogger has sources very close to an event or project, has followed a development for considerable time and has specific knowledge about a topic. And although I have significant limits on my time with a full-time job, family and other interests, I'm sure that occasionally I have more time than a P-D beat writer to put together a post.

Anyway, this brings me to a story that I couldn't pass up. It was compelling enough that this is my first post to not be about urbanism.

Ted Diadiun, Ombudsman for the Cleveland Plain Dealer felt compelled to dismiss bloggers. One concern is that bloggers quickly use and disseminate information from traditional press outlets. This rant from Diadiun has been perfectly labeled by one writer as a "Bonfire of the curmudgeons, inter-generational sneerfest from the Cleveland ombud. Painful, but revealing video."

The money quote from the 15-minute video has got to be, "It's really a bunch of pipsqueaks out there talking about what the real journalists do." Can you not help but think of Donnybrook, Bill McClellan and the whole crew, when you read that?

What Diadiun and others ignore at their own, and their company's expense, is the ever blurring line between a blogger such as myself (with a journalism degree and experience writing) and someone employed as a print journalist who writes a blog. Today, a blog (and the accompanying Twitter tweets, E-mail, etc.) is at times used as a resource by traditional media, a tip sheet, a way to fill in the blanks, a way to keep informed of the minutia that make a good story, a barometer of what's happening 'out there'. It has very quickly become a two-way street.

Wonder which way the journalistic wind is blowing? Look no further than our own Post-Dispatch. There are currently 55 blogs on the Post-Dispatch website. 55. News-16 blogs, Business-6 blogs, Sports-17 blogs, Entertainment-10 blogs, Life & Style-6 blogs.

King Kaufman at his blog The Future of Journalism has been covering the ridiculousness of the Plain Dealer rant:

JULY 8, 2009 2:54PM
Facts dog Cleveland newspaper defender
By King Kaufman: This blog is going to ask for your indulgence. It is frankly obsessed with the 15-minute video at Cleveland.com that both Katharine and I wrote about yesterday. We're thinking of changing the name of this blog to the How Crazy Was That Cleveland Plain Dealer Video? Blog.…

JULY 7, 2009 5:19PM
Staggering idiocy in Cleveland
By King Kaufman The craziest moment in the insane Cleveland Plain Dealer "reader rep chat" video Katharine Mieszkowski just wrote about comes about halfway through.
I've seen a lot of commentary in Future-of-Journalism nerdland about this video, in which the P-D's so-called reader representative, wh…

JULY 7, 2009 4:11PM
Newspaper to bloggers: Shut up pipsqueaks!
By Katharine Mieszkowski If you can get past the monotone delivery, there are some real zingers in the 15-minute video "chat wrap" with the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Reader Rep Ted Diadiun, in which he defends columnist Connie Schultz's proposal to curtail the First Amendment to save newspap…

So someone figured out that giving a metro region of city a blanket crime ranking (or even better, a danger ranking) doesn't tell someone much. It's clear enough that cities from Fort Wayne, IN to Seattle, WA have safe and less safe neighborhoods. You can click here for the full methodology, but basically this company divided the number of neighborhood residents by the number of violent crimes (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault) which occur in that neighborhood.

By this measure the most dangerous St. Louis neighborhood ranks 14th. Kansas City boasts #6 AND #8. Chicago can be found four times in the top 25 while Springfield, Il, Little Rock, AR and Orlando, FL make appearances. There is plenty of room to challenge, discuss and further explain what this list shows and doesn't show, but I am going to point out two issues:
1) Does it increase the likelihood of a resident becoming the victim of a violent crime if a visitor to a neighborhood is the victim of a violent crime? What if an area has very few residents but a high concentration of nightclubs?
2) If a resident is the victim of multiple crimes in a given year how does this affect the chance of a resident becoming a victim?

On the surface the numbers seem off. The "Most Dangerous Neighborhood" in the nation is listed as a part of Cincinnati known as Over-The-Rhine. To be sure, there is violent crime there, but does a resident really have a 25% chance of being a victim of a violent crime in any given year? I doubt it.

The other problem is that a casual observer may conclude that if a resident has a 1 in 4 chance of being a victim of violent crime in one year that if you were to live there for 4 years you would certainly become a victim. Clearly this isn't correct.

But the most insidious part is that neighborhoodscout.com suggests that their numbers should be purchased and used by commercial property developers, marketers, retail operators and insurance providers to "to determine the underlying characteristics of a neighborhood’s commercial viability or demographic appeal prior to investing in a project or opening a retail location."

Luckily here in St. Louis City many fine businesses have apparently ignored the dire numbers and are trying to make a go of it. There are even some upscale restaurants and a few national retail chains! Incredibly brave they are. Looking at the map below may lead one to conclude that one would have to be clinically insane to locate their business in the City. I'm just happy that Progressive remains willing to insure my Honda Civic in such hostile territory.


{map showing relative safety of St. Louis neighborhoods}