The calendar doesn’t lie -- this month marks the second anniversary of MyHometownOhio, and what an eventful two years it has been.
Our first stories in July, 2006 focused on downtown revitalization planning, the Ohio & Erie Canal, a tourism conference at Ohio State, neighborhood revitalization in Mansfield, work on the interior of the Ohio Statehouse dome, and the Supreme Court’s important eminent domain decision. 284 articles later, MyHometownOhio has become a staple for a large number of regular subscribers and thousands of visitors each week - and we‘ve managed to maintain a rate of an entry every 2.6 days (pretty good in the world of blogs). Stories featured on MyHometownOhio have generated articles in both large and small newspapers in Ohio, and have resulted in boosts for local preservation efforts. We were the first blog in the country to feature the automatic feed from Preservation Nation, the blog of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and now bring you feeds that include our latest offering -- Donovan Rypkema’s Place Economics blog.
There are still quirks that remain, even after all this time. For one thing, it remains difficult to get an ironclad RSS feed for Ohio media stories covering preservation and downtown revitalization, and so occasionally you will see a story pop into the mix that includes key words but which has little to do with the subject matter. The alternative is do something similar to the National Trust‘s “Preservation in the News,” which includes only stories that mention the organization itself, or to manually choose stories each day. We know that interesting preservation stories are covered in Ohio newspapers on a daily basis, and we try to bring them to you in the best way possible.
On the occasion of this anniversary, we would like to take a moment to do the first true organizational “plug” we have made in those two years. We share with you the message that Ohio’s statewide preservation movement stands in a somewhat precarious position in the middle of 2008. It is thought that Ohio boasts the largest number of properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places (individual or contributing to a district) than any other state -- yet membership in Ohio’s two statewide preservation organizations -- combined -- is, per capita, one of the lowest in the entire country. On a frequent basis, important pieces of Ohio history are lost because local the message of preservation is simply not getting through. We desperately need a unified, stronger and more effective voice.
Click here to read about Preservation Ohio, click here for membership information - and thank you.
Photo Credit: "2" - claudecf/Creative Commons License