A change in roles

It's an interesting question, perhaps: Would Stephanie O'Keeffe be an Amherst Select Board member today if she hadn't started blogging about Town Meeting two years ago? Of course, we can never really know 100% (although she may have a solid guess, for her own part). There are so many variables: Would she have become as deeply involved in town affairs without the blog, would she have built up the same level of visibility and base, etc., etc. But she says herself that blogging about TM was a catalyst for her deepening involvement in the town's political process.

Fact is, though, O'Keeffe is on the town-official side of the fence now, and in a very open, personal-point-of-view post on her original TM blog that's well worth reading, she explains why she's ceasing posting there. Public officials can sometimes come across as kind of....well, official, in a monolithic name-in-the-paper sort of way, when you're just reading about them in the news or even watching them go through the meeting rounds on local cable access. None of that here, though; this has the personal voice of any real blogger describing an experience different from anything they'd ever experienced before. Check it out; you won't have to be an Amherst resident, a political junkie, or even a supporter or opponent to appreciate the writing in this particular post.

Readers of O'Keeffe's TM blog need not feel deprived of her viewpoints, incidentally. She's also published the inAmherst.com site for a while now (it sounds like that'll be changing focus somewhat too), and she's also got a domain with her own name where she's blogging from a town official's perspective. Nor is O'Keeffe the only blogger on the Amherst Select Board; although she's not quite as prolific, Alisa Brewer also maintains a blog with her views on town affairs. This trend will only grow, and that's a good thing; the more we hear from officials about what they're thinking, whether about a town budget or life itself, the better we'll all understand how they're managing our affairs.