November 24, 2004

Update

While we work to overcome our jetlag after a week on the East Coast, and start putting ourselves back in the mindset required to get back into covering the local scene for however long we have left to do so, we thought we'd add a bit to this item by pulling together some of what's been written about us and this site, as a bit of further impetus to people to click the image above and donate to our work via the Willamette Week Give Guide.

Portland Communique built an important and alternative niche for information about local issues at the very moment when these issues were being ignored by entertainment focused local television news, and when print media was engaging more in source journalism than investigative journalism. For urban scholars, Portland Communique should be recognized as a groundbreaking effort to reconnect citizens to local issues.

-- Charles Heying, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University

I read Portland Communique often because of the straightforward commentary I can always rely on that gives me another view of any one of a number of issues that we Portlanders must consider for our future. Portland Communique makes me stop and think. I thank its devotion and commitment to Portland, and appreciate its insights greatly.

-- Randy Leonard, City Commissioner, Portland City Council

But unlike most bloggers, who typically link to previously reported material and then offer their own analysis, b!X is unusual because he's going out and doing his own legwork. Armed with a black spiral notebook, a laptop and a homemade press pass ... [he] has become a familiar face at City Council hearings, county task force meetings and news conference crushes, quietly forging something that is one step beyond the Fourth Estate.

-- Inara Verzemnieks, Cultural Reporter, The Oregonian

Portland Communique is a media experiment that really works! As soon as I get to my office in the morning, I check the Communique to see what b!X has posted overnight. The Communique provides Portland with a refreshing voice on community issues and provides an important forum for citizens to share ideas about public life. Portland Communique enriches our experience of public life, and I hope we will be reading and posting on it for years to come!

-- Wendy Radmacher-Willis, Executive Director, City Club of Portland

Of all the blogs in Portland, [Portland Communique] poses the biggest threat to napping news organizations. Frankonis is a fixture at public meetings, and he updates his site obsessively (1,300 posts to date) with news and on-point analysis.

-- Willamette Week

[Portland Communique] overcomes the banality of the personal weblog with insightful original reporting and gives otherwise impenetrable news a human spin. Commenting on all the events we don't have time to attend and posting with the regularity of a Metamucil dealer, b!X is clearly Portland's new Blog Baron.

-- Willamette Week

[O]ver the site's first year, more and more reporters for the traditional media in Portland have made Communique part of their reading routine, as have an increasing number of people in local government (both elected officials and staff).

-- Christian Crumlish, Author of The Power Of Many