Steve Corbett and gas drilling awareness

Local talk jock Steve Corbett has a daily radio show on WILK in which he goes on about whatever issue is near and dear to his heart at any given moment. Right now, he's decided that he cares about Marcellus Shale drilling. Not only that he cares - but, from what I'm hearing, that he is the first person who has ever cared about it, the only person who has ever taken a stand on it, and the only person whose position can be trusted.

Gort42: You can't trust bloggers
Circumlocution for Dummies: Drill the Huntsville dam baby, drill!

Now, I have a lot of respect for the Old Media, I really do. I subscribe to both the Citizens' Voice and the Times Leader. I get Newsweek in the mail every week, though I have found it less useful since it went to the "essay contest" format last year, ceding the provision of "news" to online sources. I listen to NPR's All Things Considered on my way in to work, and Morning Edition on the way home. I even watch CNN once in a while to see if they have any news.

There's a lot of good stuff coming out of these formats. Elizabeth Skrapits, for example, has been writing a series of excellent articles on gas drilling for the Citizens' Voice. And the strength of message delivery for each of these old, traditional formats is multiplied by having a web presence. While it may be true that nothing is real until it appears in print, it may even be more true that nothing is forever until it makes its way onto the Internet.

Sadly, a lot of stuff said on local radio isn't archived. It's just words spoken on the aether that fade in intensity according to the inverse-square law. What was said yesterday is forgotten tomorrow.

Maybe WILK archives Steve Corbett's show somewhere. If so, it's not anyplace I can easily find. Rummaging around the WILK site under the "Corbett" tab reveals a series of blog-like posts that may or may not be related to his shows.

In the post from yesterday Corbett seems to strike a more humble tone than the arrogant and dismissive one reported by Gort and Mark:

I’ve recently enlisted in the people’s army that faces off against the warlords of the massive international gas drilling companies that are already firmly entrenched in Northeastern Pennsylvania and elsewhere in what is known as Marcellus Shale country.

Well. In that case - Welcome aboard, Steve! I'm kinda new to this army myself. Let me introduce you to some of the people who have been in the front lines since before either of us knew Marcellus Shale from Marsellus Wallace.

Over at Circumlocution for Dummies, you'll find Mark Cour. He's been writing about this stuff for years. Seriously. And before that, he's been relentlessly fighting for a better Wilkes-Barre. He's a guy who won't back down in a tussle. Plus, he does his homework, and knows his stuff. Ask any reporter who's used his site as an unattributed source for an "exclusive" story. Oh, and he's been in this "blogging" game since before there was a word for it. Impressive.

And over at the Susquehanna River Sentinel we have Don Williams. Now, you might say that Don is Mark's guru in this stuff. Don is what I like to call a "clean water enthusiast" - though Mark calls him "Kayak Dude." Don wants to see to it that Pennsylvanians get to exercise their rights as spelled out in Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution:

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the
natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's
public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including
generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall
conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

Don's been at this a long time, too.

Truth be told, Steve, there are a lot of people in this army who have been fighting the fight for quite a while. And more than a few of them are bloggers.

So, show some respect. Tone down the anti-blogger rhetoric, dude. It hurts the cause.

But you're a newbie. We'll cut you some slack.