{"id":264093,"date":"2010-02-01T22:43:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T03:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.courant.com,2010:\/capitol_watch\/\/9.70886"},"modified":"2010-02-02T07:45:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T12:45:21","slug":"the-end-of-an-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/264093","title":{"rendered":"The end of an era"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Connecticut Local Politics<\/a> launched in 2005, the political blogosphere was a lonely place. The site soon became a must-read, the first stop for political junkies, operatives, spin-meisters, staffers and policy wonks of every partisan stripe. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Passionate arguments were a mainstay of the comment section and there were a myriad of maps for obsessives to pour over. Heck, sometimes the site even broke news and scooped the paid media.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Tonight comes word that CTLP is ending. Chris Bigelow, a reference librarian from Enfield whose online moniker was Genghis Conn, is moving on. “[M]o<\/font><\/font>re and more of my life is away from Connecticut, up in western Massachusetts. At some point my compass re-oriented, and now I point north. Everything, and everyone, changes,” Bigelow writes.<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
His goodbye post makes an allusion to the mammoth effort to keep up the blog as well as the site’s legal issues<\/a>.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
“No one wants a blog that has our legal baggage (and, to be fair, no one should have to deal with that stuff), so the best and wisest course of action is just to shut down,” Bigelow writes.<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Some of the blog’s regulars have already found other homes. Heath Fahle, a Republican activist and CTLP mainstay, will soon be posting on CT News Junkie<\/a> and we surely haven’t heard the last of the rest of the crew — Saramerica, Vincent, wtfnucsailor and many others. I’m sure they will be blogging, twittering and posting all over the internet (including, hopefully, right here on Capitol Watch.)<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
But I can’t help but feel sad about CTLP’s departure, especially given all the political excitement that’s about to be unleashed upon Connecticut in the run-up to the November election.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Bigelow gets the last word: “Every ending can be a new beginning, and I know some of you will take this opportunity to start up and contribute to new places for people interested in Connecticut politics to hang out, talk and debate online. That’s what I want you to do. Make videos, write brilliant things, engage one another, create something incredible, change the world already. In due time you’ll forget this place ever existed, and that’s the way it ought to be.”<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Connecticut Local Politics launched in 2005, the political blogosphere was a lonely place. The site soon became a must-read, the first stop for political junkies, operatives, spin-meisters, staffers and policy wonks of every partisan stripe.  Passionate arguments were a mainstay of the comment section and there were a myriad of maps for obsessives to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}