Rule Number One: Do Not Mess With Ollie Ox.

One of my greatest shames is that I am not industrious or sharp enough to do a blog that focuses mainly on local issues. Anyone with reasonably eclectic reading habits can do a nationally-focused blog; the stories are usually there to be plucked from the internet the way bears pluck salmon from a stream. However, the disadvantage is that while one often serves a useful purpose as a news amplifier — bringing stories to light that might otherwise not be seen in various quarters — it does tend to lend a certain degree of sameness to one’s blogging.

It takes people willing to get up off their duffs to do good jobs as locally-focused bloggers. The rewards, in addition to having a fresher take on the world (and not sounding like every other person who reads DailyKos or Eschaton or FDL or AmericaBlog or whatever and then started to blog about the same exact stuff they just read), is that with the best local bloggers there is more of a sense of connection to the things they accomplish.

All this is by way of introducing this story by Ollie Ox, who is one of the best locally-focused bloggers I’ve encountered in my admittedly-limited experience with them. It shows how she corrected some rather lazy reporting from a city slicker who thought he knew more than she did, yet was easily rolled by the rather pathetic political operation of Brian Davis, a guy who spent over $1 million and still couldn’t crack 33% against Tim Walz in Minnesota’s First Congressional District. Go and read. [UPDATE: Oh, yeah, check this out, too.]