Bursting the bubble

Last November, I wrote a series on the Chief's Corner highlighting a fragile area of Lincoln: The Southwest Team's A Beat: roughly, the northern-most part of the southwest quadrant of the city. The posts, Veterans Day on the Street, The Denizens of A Beat, and Outside the Bubble, generated a good deal of traffic and discussion.

This week, the Lincoln Journal Star is running a multi-part special report on this area, entitled The Core. Deena Winter, the lead reporter on this series, has been getting a lot of data and information from us for the past few months as she prepared for this series, and she's been on a few ride alongs with the Southwest Team. The resulting special report is an eye-opener for many people who are pretty much oblivious to the kinds of things going on in their own city. Greater awareness is a good thing. We need help, and lots of it. But the police cannot bring this neighborhood back from the brink by themselves--it's going to take a much broader effort. Perhaps this series will help jump start that effort, and provide some additional support to the people who have been trying hard to do so.

There are thousands of people in Lincoln (and a lot of community leaders) who need to have their own bubble burst. That's one of the things I've been trying to do in this blog and at every single public speaking engagement I've been at for the past few years. Hopefully, the Journal Star's larger readership will have a more pronounced effect.

As an aside, the online version of The Core is the most interactive content I have yet to see on the Journal Star's website. The multi-media interviews, back stories, and interactive maps are impressive indeed. I think you're seeing a glimpse of the future of newspapers.