What motivates a person to devote almost as much time to a neighborhood blog as they do to a full time job? For Jacqueline Dupree, it’s a desire to document history. Dupree works for the Washington Post, maintaining the company’s Intranet. But she’s also the force behind JDLand, a blog that covers a 100-block area just south of Capitol Hill where the new Washington Nationals ballpark opened last year.
Dupree’s degree is in history, not technology or journalism. “It was the historian in me who wanted to document what it looked like before [the ballpark was built].”
Dupree spends about 30 hours a week on her blog, which she produces entirely alone. “I’m a control freak,” she admits.
JDLand aggregates stories from news organizations, links to original documents and databases, and provides an interactive map and extensive photo archive. Dupree also does a lot of independent reporting, covering government meetings almost no one else attends. “Traditional media can’t cover a neighborhood down to the level of detail I would like to see.”
Whenever possible, Dupree links to original documents on government Web sites, something many mainstream news organizations won’t do. “Reporters think, ‘I found it, it’s mine and I’ll tell you about it.'” But Dupree says linking has helped her earn the trust and respect of readers.
“I think people should know everything,” Dupree says, so she tells her users everything she knows. “People have never said this is too much information; [they] ask for more.”
Dupree doesn’t call herself a journalist and compares her blog to a Charles Dickens serial. “At heart, I’m telling a story about a neighborhood a chapter at a time.” But she says JDLand is journalism. “It’s ‘news over the fence,’ what people are talking about. The paper can’t cover all of that. Just because they can’t doesn’t mean it’s not news.”
1 comment for “Inside a hyper-local blog”