Over at the City of Whitewater’s website, there’s a small survey in the left sidebar, asking questions for a possible community calendar at the City of Whitewater website. (There’s a calendar of municipal meetings now, but the survey stems from a possible community calendar on the website, listing meetings and events of community groups.) The survey asks readers where they get their community calendar information now, and lists several websites (including FREE WHITEWATER), and some nearby newspapers.
Of the choices listed, only one, the Whitewater Banner, now offers something like a community calendar. The rest offer selected meetings related to their organization’s area of authority, or an eclectic and idiosyncratic mix. Some of the newspapers listed cover cities beyond Whitewater, and so don’t focus simply on events here in town.
FREE WHITEWATER certainly falls into the eclectic and idiosyncratic mix category; this website is primarily a site for commentary, and listings for meetings typically focus on municipal meetings that I’m likely to write about. This website doesn’t offer anything like a comprehensive calendar. In other cases, involving charities or civic events, there’s no overall theme or design. (For example, I’m not a member of the Alzheimer’s Association; I simply wish them well, and am happy to post their press releases.)
This website doesn’t really list events as much comment on them. Like most blogs, it’s just not a calendar or bulletin board. Much of my focus is on politics, local or otherwise, with other topics thrown in as they strike me (or better yet, as they’re suggested to me).
When I started writing over three years ago, I didn’t intend to post every day, much less a few times a day, most days. Two years ago, when I started a simple Daily Bread feature (with name kindly suggested to me), it was the first time I considered posting every weekday. That seems like a long time ago now, and this website has grown considerably since then, simply by advocating a point of view, and holding to it.
As with the political life of the city, writing like this has no final or supposedly ultimate moments. (I didn’t mark an anniversary this year.) There’s just daily commentary, along with sundry, lighter topics as strike me. In my first two years, I would sometimes stop and ask myself: Another year, perhaps? I’ve not bothered with the question this year — writing is its own, continuing activity.
I’m sure many cities use their websites for community calendars, and that’s more likely true in towns with without an in-town newspaper. Although the Banner already offers a calendar for Whitewater, a community calendar on the City of Whitewater website is likely to increase traffic to the city’s site. If the calendar were easily visible from the mainpage of the city’s site, it would also offer a chance to draw additional readers to anything else appearing on the same page (latest video, service announcements, etc.). There’s now a public access station that lists (and records) community events, so a public website listing the same is simply an expansion to a second medium.
More sources of information are, I think, better than fewer, generally.