Category: Blogs and Blog Administration
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Give a Warm Bacon’s Rebellion Welcome to Dick Hall-Sizemore
I am pleased to announce that Richard W. “Dick” Hall-Sizemore has joined the stable of semi-regular contributors to Bacon’s Rebellion. Dick has haunted the halls of Capitol Square for some 40 years, first as a legislative aide, then as a local government lobbyist, and in the past 25 years as a policy analyst with the…
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Passing the Digital Tin Cup
Dear Bacon’s Rebellion readers, This is the beginning of a new year, the time when many online publications hit up their readers for donations (see the “subscribe” button in the upper left-hand corner). While we will gladly accept your contributions, which we apply to an upgraded hosting package and other services that improve our blogging productivity and…
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Bacon’s Rebellion 2018 — Year of the Pothead
Other blogs publish a list of their most heavily trafficked posts of the previous year, so I guess Bacon’s Rebellion will succumb to peer pressure and do the same. If there’s any conclusion to be drawn from the 2018 list of the Bacon’s Rebellion Top Twelve stories, it’s that our readers — or perhaps random web…
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I’m Baaaack!
Announced in the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page this morning: Earlier this month [James A.] Bacon briefly joined the Editorial staff of The Times-Dispatch, hired by Bob Rayner, who is editor of the Editorial Pages. When Rayner announced earlier this week that he is retiring from the newspaper business, Bacon decided to leave the paper as…
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Big Changes for Bacon’s Rebellion
I am pleased to announce that I have joined the Editorial Department of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Working on a part-time basis, I will contribute signed op-ed pieces and unsigned editorials to the newspaper. I will focus, as I have for Bacon’s Rebellion, mainly on state and local public-policy issues. I will continue publishing Bacon’s Rebellion…
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VPAP Baffled by Media’s Blurry Lines
The Virginia Public Access Project continues to struggle to define what constitutes news reporting worth of inclusion in its popular VaNews news digest — a daily e-letter with thousands of readers who actively follow state and local news. In the most recent iteration of VPAP policy, Bacon’s Rebellion ended up the big loser. In a…
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VaNews, the New Power Broker in the Virginia Media Landscape
When David Poole launched the Virginia Public Access Project’s VaNews digest of news articles about Virginia politics and policy, he had no way of imagining that things would get so complicated. As other news aggregators do, VaNews rounded up the top stories from Virginia’s newspapers, television stations, and selected online publications, excerpting headlines and lead…
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Report to Agitators, Bomb Throwers and Rebels
Many thanks to the readers who contribute monthly to Bacon’s Rebellion via the subscriber button atop the left-hand column. I want you to know how your donations have contributed to the blog. First, we have migrated Bacon’s Rebellion to a new hosting platform that promises much faster page-loading speeds. If you found the blog frustratingly…
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New Chapter for Bacon’s Rebellion
Today marks the end of a three-year era at Bacon’s Rebellion — the final day of Dominion Energy’s sponsorship of reporting and commentary on energy issues in Virginia. Dominion and I are parting on excellent terms, but I have decided to let the sponsorship expire in order to take the blog in a new direction.…
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A Newer, Bigger, Shinier Command Bunker
Bacon’s Rebellion is moving its hidden underground command center to a new, undisclosed location today. This massive logistical effort will entail a temporary diminution of insurgent activity. But have no fear, the blogging of the rebellion will resume shortly.
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Welcome Steve Haner to Bacon’s Rebellion
I’m pleased to announce that Stephen D. Haner is joining the ranks of Bacon’s Rebellion contributors. An occasional guest columnist in the past, he will become a more regular presence on the blog. Steve brings a unique perspective to public policy in Virginia. He started his career as a journalist. When I first met him…
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Still a Few Slots Open for the Big Bacon Fry
The political discourse in the United States just gets nastier. People in the other political tribe aren’t just misguided or informed by different values, they’re ignorant, stupid, lying, evil people out to ruin the country. If you’re a Bacon’s Rebellion reader, you’re probably just as tired of the hyperbolic rhetoric and personal vilification as I…
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Groupthink Leads to Polarization… Which Leads to Foaming at the Mouth
From “Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right,” by Ken Stern, former CEO of NPR and lifelong Democrat (excerpt published in the Daily Beast): We are becoming angrier and more polarized not because of increasing issue disagreement but because we are increasingly participating in groupthink. When all…
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You’re Invited to the Big Bacon Fry
Politics is nastier now than at any time in forty years. As University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato recently opined, at least in the 1960s and ’70s the country fractured over monumental issues such as Civil Rights, the Vietnam War and Watergate. Today, the animus is largely personality driven, mostly involving the person of…
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Five More CURA Studies!
Both Virginia Commonwealth University and I have fallen down on our pledges to promote the Virginia-focused public policy work of the university’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis (CURA). Since last I highlighted one of CURA’s studies on Bacon’s Rebellion, the center has published five more without any notice on this blog. Hopefully, we have…