Anyone who has been in Charlotte long enough to remember when Knight Ridder tried to kill off Creative Loafing with Break! magazine — yeech — can look around and see that Charlotte has more alt-media outlets than ever. They provide the means, if utilized properly, to wrench Charlotte off of its Detroit-on-the Catawba glidepath and back towards fiscal sanity and government accountability.

The Uptown crowd does not control the blogosphere, and does not control alt-group Web sites, cable access shows, or talk radio. It does largely control a ridderless and confused daily paper, and Uptown has powerful corporate allies. They, in turn, control expensive, effective, but utimately slow-reacting PR firms and can spend virtually unlimited amounts of money on propaganda.cf

That used to be enough to set and control the local policy debate. Not anymore. Blogs have killed propaganda — be it corporate or government, foreign or domestic — dead. The Big Lie dies from a thousands little cuts. Right now light rail in Charlotte has about 879 cuts and is going to ground. Only a last minute bailout and more lies can save it. That may yet happen.

If it does, it will only be because people who knew better refused to act.

The entire issue of the interaction between blogs and policy and politics jsut happens to be a major theme of a Carolina Freedom Net 2006.

On October 7th, bloggers from across the Carolinas will gather in Greensboro to share ideas and hear Powerline’s Scott Johnson recount how the Big Lie of Rathergate was exposed.

Don’t be surprised if that segues into a discussion of how to kill a train and save a city.