Category Archives: Blogs and blog administration

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 well and devote his energies to maintaining Bacon’s Rebellion as one of Virginia’s sharpest websites devoted to assessing public policy. We’re glad he’s still part of the civic conversation. We hope to be able to publish columns by Bacon on a fairly regular basis in the opinion pages of the The Times-Dispatch.

I had been looking forward to working with Bob, who was an excellent editor and an articulate voice for civil and principled conservatism. With his unexpected retirement, my calculus changed, and I have resolved to redouble my efforts to build Bacon’s Rebellion into a credible conservative/libertarian voice in Virginia journalism.

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 independently. Editorial Page Editor Bob Rayner and I are committed to exploring ways in which the Editorial Department and the blog can work together to create a stronger online editorial presence for both. We envision several avenues of collaboration.

First, the RTD has given me permission to re-publish op-eds I write for the newspaper on Bacon’s Rebellion (although unsigned editorials will remain the newspaper’s exclusive property) after a 24-hour delay.

Second, the RTD will link to Bacon’s Rebellion for expanded versions of the newspaper’s editorials and op-eds with additional commentary, tables, graphs and maps that the newspaper does not have space to print.

Third, we have discussed ways to further expand the RTD’s commitment to civic conversations on a wide range of issues affecting the Richmond region and Virginia as a whole. Recently, the RTD Public Square celebrated its 75th program and we’ll be looking to further promote civil dialogue.

In the meantime, I will continue to post commentary to Bacon’s Rebellion as time permits. Fortunately, the blog has two strong contributors in Steve Haner and Don Rippert, so readers can be confident that the blog will be as timely and incisive as ever.

I am hopeful that the new partnership between newspaper and blog will demonstrate one possible way to reinvigorate local journalism – so essential for our democracy – in the digital era.

— Jim Bacon

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 slow before, you should enjoy the new experience. I suspect that the lethargic download speeds had been discouraging people from visiting the website, and I’m hoping for an uptick in page views.

Second, we have created a mechanism for separating our news articles (based upon original reporting) from our commentary (opining upon the reporting of others) and posting the news on its own page, which can be accessed via the “News” button on the blog’s navigation bar. We don’t expect this feature to be particularly valuable to readers — you can read the same articles mixed with commentary on the home page as you always have — but it should increase the blog’s visibility for aggregators of news content. The result should be greater exposure for the blog.

No Bacon post would be complete without a bottom line, and the bottom line is this: Thank you, faithful readers, for supporting the blog financially. Your donations are making a difference.

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. One option I am considering is creating a new business model that will allow the blog to become a bigger force in Virginia journalism.

It’s a sad fact that shrinking news staffs and editorial holes in Virginia newspapers are leaving vast gaps in journalistic coverage. Sponsorships over the years gave me the freedom to cover important state boards such as the Commonwealth Transportation Board and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, whose activities would have gone largely unreported otherwise. I have reported in-depth about transportation, land use, smart growth, public health, higher education, and the electric grid.

The one-man-blog model allowed me to make a comfortable living doing what I loved to do, but it was impossible to grow. For a long time, I really didn’t care if Bacon’s Rebellion grew — it did what I wanted it to do. But now I worry that Virginia’s newspapers are in meltdown mode. The press corps covering the Governor’s Office and General Assembly is a shadow of its former self. Increasingly, state government agencies are operating in the dark. A handful of statehouse reporters are still doing yeoman’s work, but it’s not clear how long Virginia’s newspapers can continue to employ them.

If newspapers continue their meltdown, who will report the news? Who will hold government accountable?

An emerging model of journalism is based on funding by non-newspapers — conservative government watchdogs or liberal environmental advocates. Agenda-driven journalism is better than no journalism at all, but… it’s agenda driven.

All reporters have biases, conscious or unconscious. I freely acknowledge that I am favorably disposed to limited government and free markets, and I am unfavorably disposed to social engineering. However, I firmly believe that you can’t understand one side of the argument unless you also understand the other side of the argument. Ironically, under my Dominion sponsorship, I felt an obligation to give greater voice to anti-Dominion environmental groups than I might have been inclined to do had I remained an unsponsored commentator. As an aside, while Dominion would pitch stories to me as it did to other reporters, the company never tried to control what I wrote. I question if the backers of agenda-driven journalism will be willing to take the same hands-off approach.

Beginning with the “Big Bacon Fry” event late last year, I have been holding conversations with a variety of people about the future of Bacon’s Rebellion. I have concluded that there is a viable business model for a non agenda-driven publication focused on covering the Virginia statehouse. Such a venture would re-conceptualize reporters from people who report to editors and publish articles in newspapers into people who create a nexus for the flow of information on a chosen topic, such as the future of the electric grid, innovation in transportation, productivity in health care, or something similar. Content would run the gamut of written journalism, commentary, white papers, video presentations, networking luncheons, seminars and conferences.

Another possibility is to reinvent Bacon’s Rebellion as a platform for cranky old men (and women). At 65 years, I’m in a financial position to do whatever I want in “retirement,” and that might include doing what I’ve been doing all along — without the necessity of focusing on subject matter aligned with sponsorships. Steve Haner, who has reached a similar stage in life, already has made a tremendous contribution to Bacon’s Rebellion, adding his valuable perspectives as a former journalist, political operative and lobbyist. Perhaps there are others who would enjoy blogging as a serious retirement activity.

I have some personal decisions to make about how to allocate my time over the next couple of years — I do have a major commitment writing a corporate history — so I may or may not have the bandwidth to oversee a full transformation of the blog. But I am open to talking to and partnering with others. If anyone has thoughts to share, I would love to talk to you.

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.

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 rectified the breakdown in communications, and I will provide access to future studies on a timely basis.

To make partial amends, I would like to alert Virginia’s policy wonk community to those five studies published over the past year or so.

Evaluation of the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program  (December 2016)

Analysis of the impacts of the program on employment and real-estate values, the features of the program that work well, and determination of how enterprise-zone performance can be enhanced. (Prepared for the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.)

The Impact of Heritage Tourism on the Virginia Economy (February 2017) ‌ 

Estimates the quantitative impact of heritage tourism on the state’s economy, and provides a qualitative picture of the role of heritage tourism in community development in Southwest Virginia, Northern Virginia, and on the Eastern Shore. (Prepared for Preservation Virginia.)

Downtown Hopewell Space Feasibility Study (August 2017)

Studied the community demand for potential uses of a 14,000-square-foot building, located in downtown Hopewell. The study looked at successful kitchen incubators and makerspace facilities in other states, conducting a business survey, and presenting a cash flow analysis of five scenarios for potential uses of the space. (Prepared for Hopewell Downtown Partnership.)

Understanding the Jobs-Affordable Housing Balance in the Richmond Region (July 2017)

This report maps and describes the geographic relationship of affordable housing and low-wage jobs in the Richmond region through two different spatial models: a Thiessen polygon-based approach and a gravity-based approach. The report also examines housing value and crime data in neighborhoods around six different affordable housing developments to identify any impacts the developments had on topics of concern to neighbors of affordable housing. (Prepared with the support of the Community Foundation.)

Second Annual MetroView Development Tracker (July 2017)

MetroView Development Tracker provides a snapshot of land use, property value, development footprint, and jobs-housing balance as of 2014-2015 for 15 counties, 6 independent cities, and one town comprising the greater Richmond metropolitan area. Detailed land use profiles for the RRPDC and Crater PDC boundaries and for individual county/city are also included in the report.

Moon as energy conservation device. During the solar eclipse Monday, local temperatures dropped five to six degrees and electric consumption reported by Bristol Virginia Utilities, which serves Bristol, Va., fell five megawatts — or about 7.6%. So reports the Bristol Herald-Courier.

Dominion launches coal ash study. Dominion Energy has hired AECOM, a multinational engineering firm, to conduct an independent assessment of how to dispose of the ash in the utility’s coal ash ponds. Dominion is evaluating whether to close and cap the coal ash in place, recycle it, or transport it to a lined landfill, reports the Chesterfield Observer. Dominion is required to submit a report to state government by Dec. 1.

VCU Engineering joins the online parade. Thanks to a $25 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering will launch an online program in conjunction with VCU’s Medicines for All Institute. The purpose of the Institute is to  reduce costs of manufacturing pharmaceutical products and increase global access to medications. Read more at Richmond BizSense.

Artificial hip

Part man, part machine — that’ll be me in about six or seven hours. I’ll be checking into Saint Mary’s hospital to get a new ceramic-titanium hip to replace the flawed model that my DNA bequeathed me.

I’ll be out of action for a few days, and I expect my blogging productivity will be diminished for some time after that. Pain meds and clear thinking do not go hand in hand. But with luck I’ll come back stronger than ever. Personal issues have severely distracted my blogging over the past few months, and I hope this will be the last of them. There’s so much woolly headed thinking to dispel!