Blog anniversary season

February 9, 2010 7:59 pm by Steve Rawley

For some reason, we seem to like starting new blogs in February in my household. Wacky Mommy started her blogging back in February of 2005, and started hitting on school politics right off the bat.

A year later, I started my own blog. But it wasn’t until February 2007 that I started ranting (anonymously) about school politics there (warning: salty language).

As school politics gradually took over my blog — and big chunks of my free time — my kids were growing up. My eldest started bugging me about writing mostly school stuff on a blog called “More Hockey Less War.”

So in February 2008, I started this blog. I had no idea what to expect. Two years hence, it’s become much more than my personal soap box.

I didn’t initially aspire to reinvent journalism. But somewhere along the way it became clear that I was doing work on this Web site that mainstream commercial media were increasingly neglecting. It’s not that I’m doing something better than the pros. It’s that nobody’s paying the pros to do what they should be doing. I think it’s fair to say we’ve been covering a story that The Oregonian has consistently missed — or chosen to ignore — for two decades.

I also never aspired to be a celebrity spokesmodel for school equity, or a public figure of any kind.

But I live by an informal creed: If I see injustice and do not speak, am I not complicit?

I’ve been speaking out, for the sake of my children as much as for the greater common good. But when I’m spending time researching, interviewing, writing, fact checking and editing instead of reading with my kids or playing music, there’s a fundamental disconnect in my values, or at least an imbalance. In the words of Bob Dylan, “Lost time is not found again.”

This is all a long way of saying: expect changes around here in the coming year. I want to keep PPS Equity around, but I also want to take a step back from its day-to-day operations. I believe Portland needs an independent, critical voice covering this beat, and I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible here.

There are a few options I’m exploring for the future, but none are definite. One thing is for certain: readers contribute more to this site than me. So I have no doubt that it will continue in some form or another.

Stay tuned, and stay in touch.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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