iBrattleboro Turns 19

If you like the number 2, today is a good day: 02-20-2022. It’s also the 19th birthday of iBrattleboro.com. Can you imagine?

For those new to town, iBrattleboro is citizen journalism. It’s a local, free publishing platform for you to share your news, events, comments, and other Brattleboro things. We have free classifieds and free advertising. Anything you publish gets promoted to over 1600 twitter followers as well.

You can do interviews with people you know, or write about classes you are taking. You can share opinions on town matters, or a recipe for a good meal. Share your creative works – fiction, poetry, music, and videos. Tell us about your political ambitions. 

The site is always more interesting the more the people of Brattleboro use it. Everyone knows something, and the theory behind this site is that if people share what they know, we’ll all know it.  

A corollary is if you don’t see it on the site, it is because no one in town made note of in this historical record, yet. That makes it an opportunity for you – you can share what you know, or ask a question for others to help fill in details. 

iBrattleboro doesn’t have reporters. There are no assignments. We work on the hope that people who live in Brattleboro want to write about it, locally.

iBrattleboro doesn’t have a paywall. We don’t track your every move or sell your data. We aren’t bankrolled by a billionaire nor are we bailed out by a generous donor. We aren’t swayed by advertising revenue because there isn’t any.

We don’t edit your letters to the editor to change their meaning. There’s no word limit.

For you logged in users, you all have personal, local social media pages here on the site. You can form groups, send private messages, see what you’ve published, and more.

https://www.ibrattleboro.com/username  

We give this all to you, free, and only ask that you take advantage of this local publishing platform in return. Pretty easy, eh?  You get great local exposure and the good feeling of sticking it to billionaires.

….

As for turning 19, wow. When we started this I had no idea that it was the start of a 7 day a week 365 day a year volunteer position. I check in multiple times a day, every day. This includes holidays, family events, and while I’m busy doing my real job.  

I personally rely on your submissions to keep me going. Really.  Your stories and comments make it worthwhile. If you keep writing, I will, too, and will keep this going.

Some of y’all worried me when you decided to spend your time writing for the Facebook corporation. All sorts of people who claimed to “support local” were quick to throw that out the window and move on to the shiny new object that wasn’t actually good for them or others.  Local stores with “Find me on Facebook” signs were/are depressing.

Luckily, the love of all things Zuckerberg has waned. Facebook is falling apart as people move on to newer shinier things. And some people are remembering that local is important.

iBrattleboro was born in the run-up to the Iraq war, when the corporate media was in lockstep with the government, all driving us toward war.  It’s a bit ironic that as I write this, some things haven’t changed. There’s a steady drumbeat toward war with Russia.

Thanks for all of your stories, recipes, videos, events and comments! Keep it coming.

And tell people they can find you on iBrattleboro.com.  : )

Happy b-day.