A new century

We hadn't realised it at the time, but yesterday's post to LawsWatch was #100 (and that's not counting Council Watch or LawsWatch polls).

We've been around only since 1 July this year - 83 days - so we've maintained a steady rate of a little over a post a day, resting only on weekends (and not always then). Blogger.com seems unable to give us a figure for the number of comments you've left over that time, but we wouldn't be surprised if it was many more than 1,000.

That's a lot of words - mostly from us, with help from you.

When LawsWatch was first established, it was envisaged that there'd be more of a two-way information exchange. To some degree that occurs, but what happens more often is that we report, then offer an opinion, then people come along and agree or disagree.

As we did when we started LawsWatch, we believe it offers Wanganui a valuable focal point for debate. But so would a "bulletin board" system which consisted entirely of comment threads. LawsWatch has tried - successfully for the most part, we humbly feel - to go beyond that and report what other media are unwilling or unable to (and, to be fair, it's usually the latter). Our opinions matter no more nor less than anyone who comments here. What adds the most value to LawsWatch is the research we're able to do, the meetings we're able to report, and the history we can look back at and relate to the present.

But whereas other media employ people to do that reporting, LawsWatch relies on a small but dedicated core group of Watchers with occasional contributions from a broad range of people. That model got the blog started, and well read by a good portion of Wanganui-ites - and particularly pleasing is that people come here and voice their opposition to the conclusions we've drawn from some of the facts we've reported. That suggests not only a widespread audience, but a diverse one.

But now, with 100 posts behind us, things need to change. LawsWatch needs, we feel, to become more of a community effort. Not just to ensure that no one carries too great a load, but also in the hope of garnering a more diverse range of views and sources of information.

So from here on out, more of LawsWatch is over to you. Our email address is lawswatch-at-hotmail-dot-com. Send us news snippets, information, documents, leads, suggestions or even complete posts and, if they're relevant, we'll publish them. Morgs Hunter-Bell has already used LawsWatch to update Wanganui on the progress of WYC'D and the Youth Council (and to settle the confusion about the relationship between the two).

That's the new model for LawsWatch, supplemented by regular but less frequent posts from the Watchers.

"If you build it, they will come," as Hollywood told us. We've built it - the blog and the audience. Now we're inviting you to truly be a part of it. You might like to add our email to your address book: lawswatch-at-hotmail-dot-com. And remember, you can set up an anonymous email for yourself at Hotmail, Yahoo, or any one of a number of similar free email services.

Update (5.08pm): On the topic of the availability of information, Russell Brown reports that the NZ Herald is going to start charging for "premium" content (mainly opinion pieces) at a cost of $3 a day (twice the cost of the entire printed paper). As he says, "this is effectively the end of my - or any other blogger - linking to anything written by the Herald commentators covered by the policy". And, if you find a story using the paper's on-site search, the link will expire in seven days, and you'd then have to pay to read the story. But if you find it some other way (and Russell explains how), you won't. The Chron is part of the same stable as the Herald - it's to be hoped they're not forced to follow suit. Meantime, if you value free access to your online Herald, we suggest you write to them and tell them so.

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