Bermuda Network News has either done a soft launch or they're just testing their new look. They're trying to give a cleaner appearance and added functionality in the form of public and private discussion boards. Some aspects such as the Photo Gallery, cause the page to expand in an ungracious fashion, they ought to tweak that bit. Will be interesting to see how much new and unique content is published on that site.
In any event, the lack of action from Bermuda Broadcasting and VSB as far as initiating an online presence is allowing for BNN, a likely beneficiary of Government advertising going forward to go on hiatus and reemerge as an online 'news provider' without taking much of a hit.
The author of politics.bm has decided to call it a day for his blog. The Politics.bm site had been around since September 2003, perhaps an eon ago in Internet-time. What I think this site served to show us that blogs, particularly ones that focused on news, business, sports or politics, can be worthy compliments to the traditional media outlets for providing information and discussion.
It got derided as a UBP-propoganda machine from PLP-affiliated critics, particularly over the last two years, but posts kept on coming thick and fast. Thus the suspension of active blogging came as a unexpected shock. There is a big gap in the local blogosphere right now and one not likely to be filled for some time.
With NewOnion, Bda Longtail and 21 Square now in a state of hiatus/dormancy/suspended activity, there's a limited amount of online discussion. Prog Minds seems to have reemerged after three months in its cocoon but so far it's more of the same Bash UBP/Offer no creative input stuff. Recently launched Bermuda Fables is providing interesting discussion so far.
Catch-A-Fire and Vexed Bermoothes (with special mention to the two online forums BS and BIAW), arguably discuss the most compelling and talked-about issues with news and politics on the island and remain popular. There was a blog comment posted recently that suggested that the local blogosphere is somewhat irrelevant because the online community is predominantly white Bermudian and white expat, a minority of the population in Bermuda as a whole. I would tend to agree that the online community doesn't come close to representing the population, however it doesn't necessarily make what is discussed online irrelevant. I don't know if black residents will embrace online blogging, etc., in the numbers that white residents do. Black residents sign up to BermyNet and VybezAlliance, so it may not be a simple matter of accessing the Web. I don't have the answers.
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