Blogger Appreciation - BlogKC

BlogKC is the bass player of the Kansas City Blogosphere, standing way in back, head down, plunking out a rhythm that is essential to the song but almost unnoticeable behind the screaming guitars, dramatic vocalists and hard-blowing brass. Low-key and dependable are the two words that come to mind when I think of BlogKC - two words that rarely come to mind when blogs are the topic.

Low-key is not a kind synonym for bland, though. Attentive readers of BlogKC know that William Rockhill Nelson, the pseudonymous author, has a strong agenda and clear interests. WRN generally tends to focus on the positive, drawing attention to those doing good, and he has a bias for the environment. Who else, in a 2-paragraph piece on the Plaza Lighting Ceremony, devotes more than half the space to highlighting public transportation to the event?

Dating back to 2003, BlogKC has been at this game longer than any other active Kansas City news blog. His first archived post is about Mayor Barnes discussing when the downtown arena would be completed (she was wrong on this, too), and another early post discusses speculation that Claire McCaskill would challenge Bob Holden in a Democratic primary for Governor.

BlogKC does not evoke a lot of superlatives - it doesn't set its sights on that. But when BlogKC speaks, people listen. A recent post about a proposed annexation of 300 acres of urban sprawl in Platte County raised issues that had been completely missed by the undependable and incompetent Star, and people in City Hall were talking about it.

BlogKC is informative, informed, thoughtful, insightful, and fun to read. We've been lucky to have it for a little over 7 years, and I hope we will have its steady, measured voice long into the future.