Two oil pipelines cross Georgia from east to west. The Baku-Supsa pipeline runs from the rich oil fields of Azerbaijan to the Black Sea (the Baku-Supsa pipeline). The BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline runs north out of Azerbaijan through Georgia, avoiding Armenia, then turning south through Turkey to the Med. The Russian Federation is served by a single pipeline out of Baku in Azerbaijan, running north-west along the Caspian, then to the west north of the Caucasus and terminating at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
Russia has fifty-four billionaires listed by Forbes magazine comprising a modern industrial oligarchy. The Ukraine has three. Georgia has none.
Georgia is a representative democracy, organized as a secular, unitary, semi-presidential republic. It is currently a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, and GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. The country seeks to join NATO and, in the longer term, accession to the European Union.
It looks like Georgia’s autonomy is about to run out. The democratic interlude is over. In Russia the commissars have been replaced by the oligarchs, but for Georgia it looks like the results will be the same: subjugation to Russian rule.
Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn co-host Yi-Tan, a weekly conference call that eventually covers most things cyberlogical. Today’s guests were Lisa Williams — founder of placeblogger, Tish Grier — Online Community Maven and social media consultant, and Danny Ayers — (not the semantic web advocate, but rather the) Director, Interactive Media at MyNC.com – WNCN-TV. They were gathered to talk about hyperlocal news and the business model for “place blogs.”
Hyperlocal media, “place blogs,” share “the lived experience of a place.” They can tightly focus on specific aspects of community life. (I’m thinking of starting one on Madison, Wisconsin Mexican food). They can represent almost any point of view: someone mentioned a blog that’s written from a dog’s perspective. Place blogs can provide coverage where mainstream media has gaps, for example news regarding a city’s outlying suburbs.
I enjoyed listening in and I was happy to have so much place blogging lore and so many links aggregated for me in a forty-five minute conference call, but the topic was a slippery one and I failed to grasp any emergent facts regarding business models. The conventional wisdom that blogging is a “labor of love,” and that the creation of place blogs really resides in the “gift economy” was contradicted by the counter-assertion that you could make money in the hyperlocal market if you were associated with a media company.
Somebody observed that “google eats everybody’s lunch,” but the details of just what that means and what’s implied were scarce. Nobody talked about the grantsmanship that can ease the financial burden of a local blogger, although Knight Ridder has provided funds for some of the discussants’ efforts.
I came away with a lot of interesting links. I’ll share them here:
NYT: Voices from the Suburban Blogosphere
30Threads… Danny Ayers
MyNC.com… Danny Ayers
Barista.net
Coastsider… Half Moon Bay blog
Dane101.com and Dane101.net
Wifidog
What’s Up Lawrence
placeblogger… Williams and Grier
Center for Citizen Media
oh, and here’s another way to do it: BlogNetNews
