Amazing news, constantly. Fred’s last post is the perfect example.

However, as we head into Christmas, we’re coasting a bit, to permit team members more time with their families. I’ll still get stuff up for you readers, every day, as my holiday plans are virtually nil.

Christmas is only Christmas when the kids are around and it looks like I won’t be seeing mine till mid-January. Que sera sera.

But let me remind you - and ask you - to consider a few things. Listen up, read through this entire post, ’cause this is important to all of us.

Remember the story Anonymoses wrote about Greensboro’s blogger/newspaper evolution occurring?

Well, for Oregonians, a principal source of news well-recognized by us bloggers, the community and public officials has been Portland Communique.

It’s author, known as the One True B!x, has been trying everything he can to keep it afloat for months. It’s a shame he’s not able to break through like the Greensboro bloggers have. However, an alt publication, The Willamette Week, is doing a holiday fundraising gig for local charities. And they decided to include him in their appeal. https://www.wweek.com/giveguide/charity.php?charity=b7 Note the praise they give to Christopher.

Here’s another look at Christopher from an interview at Blog Herald. http://www.blogherald.com/2004/12/15/death-in-the-blogosphere-christopher-frankonis-portland-communique/

And New Media Musings covered him in November. http://www.newmediamusings.com/blog/2004/11/portland_commun.html

But look a little further and you also find this. https://www.wweek.com/giveguide/

They’re recommending 30 charities in all, most traditional ones with tax deductions. Christopher’s competing without that advantage. And they add:

” p.s. We’re providing special incentives of $1,000 each to the organizations that achieve: (a) the most contributions from folks under 35; (b) the most $25 contributions; and (c) the largest total. “

Think about that. This means the paper is giving out $3000 in all. If Christopher gains the most contributions in all three categories, he could gain a $3000 bonus!

Now look, if millions can be raised by blogs for Howard Dean and John Kerry on a losing cause, do you think the political blogosphere can demonstrate again its capacity to do good? Think of it as an inexpensive three step process:

1) Donate $25 as an act of Christmas charity to a fellow blogger who was one of the soldiers who moved Oregon more blue. Good works deserves positive feedback, yes?

2) Post this same appeal on your blog. Not the link to me. Copy the whole pertinent section, so your readers will click through to the Willamette Week. Copy/paste and post. (That’s why I also included the raw URLs).

3) Fire up your mail program and ask all the bloggers you know to do the same thing.

See how simple that is? We just may be able to keep a very worthwhile and effective blog in existence. It’d be especially great if the big-name bloggers help with this effort. If you know them, ask them, too.

For those unfamiliar with Christopher, here’s his blog. http://communique.portland.or.us/04/12/final_beg_for_contributions_via_give_guide.html

As he notes, he hasn’t even covered one month’s expenses yet. And his Grandmum, on the East coast , may be known to you. Have you ever read Elaine at Kalilily Time ? http://www.kalilily.net/

You just have to love someone who bills herself as the “Self-Proclaimed Resident Crone of Blogdom.” I was reading her before I knew of Portland Communique.

I can hear wheels spinning in some minds now. Why doesn’t he get a regular job, as most bloggers do? And why isn’t his family helping him?

Christopher does more than most. He attends events like a real journalist. He’s a political activist. And Oregon has the third highest rate of unemployment in the nation. (I should know; I’ve been unemployed and looking for the second longest period of my life, unemployed since last April. I do remodelling work on the house I’m living in to offset my shelter cost. Times are tough out here, it’s that simple. As for family help, who knows? And more importantly, it ignores a key point.)

Blogging, the new media. The Dean & Trippi revolution, raising the bat. Interactive, grasroots. Building community.

If this is part of what Clinton proposed, ‘building the bridge to tomorrow’, if this is new age networking, then what exactly is it? Hundreds of thousands of readers visit a dozen sites and built a revenue base that has done a great job supporting the ‘have-enoughs’. A talent like Christopher, a real contributor to a city of half a million, remains a have-not.

Obviously, he’s got to figure out a longer term solution to make his blog viable. But here’s a chance, for a mere $25 from you, and a little added blog & email effort, to turn that $25 into $3,000, granting him several months to work out that longterm solution.

It’s Christmas, too. Sure, all that shopping costs. But I’m tellin’ ya, Christopher’s one the whole blogosphere should stand up for. He’s not a puppy in a shelter or suffering from some tragic disease. But he’s providing for his city in a way that not a lot of us do.

Let us be the venture capitalists here. Let us be the angel investors, and see what it yields. I don’t even know Christopher personally, but I sense this is right. Twenty five bucks and a few copy/pastes.

Or is that bridge to tomorrow, just someone selling us the same old Brooklyn Bridge all over again? Is blogging just a microcosm of the same old existing divide?

I’m reporting. YOU decide.