Okay, so we're hip, us BlogCritics. We blog, we surf, we link all over the place. We know the big names and talk about them like they're intimates. But what about people in small towns?

I've worked for two small town newspapers as a reporter. As mundane and sometimes goofy as the news can be, it is very important to those who live there.

I wonder if there are any dedicated bloggers out there who've made a concerted effort to create the equivalent of a "newspaper of record" for their municipality online. And if not, how do we encourage movement in this direction?

The content model is straightforward. You need town council coverage, a police blotter and community listings — births, deaths, engagements and wedddings, national honor society rolls, military enlistments and assignments, fire hall bingo and bean supper announcements.

Stuff from state and federal elected reps is usually pointless, but necessary. Actually, could you imagine their surprise if these blog-gazettes published their voting records? What about their abenteeism? Their paid junkets and expense accounts?

Land sales and real estate listings are also good, as well as the occasional feature story about the rattlesnake in Mrs. Gertrude's cupboard.

Blogging is relatively free, of course, and there may even be the chance of actual advertising income, in ten and twenty dollar increments — especially if there's no other media outlet.

The biggest problem is journalistic discipline, actually keeping to the topics and getting it right — everyone, myself included, has considered their dental flossing habits to be a matter worthy of a post at times. To feed this urge, a personal column could be used by the homespun journalist.

Speaking of columns, there's no shortage of cranky oldsters to enlist in writing their curmudeonly vitriol — if only to be published!

Seriously, though, does anyone know of any blogs of this nature — outlets that try to factually disseminate what's going on in their locale — just like a newspaper?

Now that we're well into the blogging phenom itself, I wonder, if just like the Web in general, we're not going to see these quieter, yet more pragmatic enterprises come into being.

Now that I'm writing this, I wonder if there isn't a business in it — a dedicated blogsite that hosts and trains people to perform this function. The service would need a category template, instructions on how to gather and edit information, links to paragons in the field and even a sample workflow schedule to aid production. And a spell checker, please, Santa.

The end result would be residents knowing more about their community, greater civic involvement and perhaps even tighter social bonds. The kind of service a print newspaper provides.

Now that would be a revolution.

Final note: Now that I've written out the idea I had over a morning cup of java, if anyone knows of this kind of thing, drop me an email. Maybe there's an article in it.