Why blog? Because it's there, and I love to write

A reader responding to the first part of my series on the fall of The Tennessean as an institution of credibility and community leadership asks why there are no responses to my blog posts. And thus, why continue doing the blog?

Good question.

I love to write. I do the blog for the love of writing and the people I write about. Plus, I am committed to neither political extreme. I find good in Republicans and Democrats. I don't believe in the increase in bias appearing in news reporting and the punditry and cable networks.

Of any success with the blog, the only thing I can really point out is the case of the torture of Juana Villegas DeLaPaz by Nashville authorities for illegally passing a vehicle under the heinous 287g deportation program.

She was shackled by wrist and ankle before and after delivering her fourth American child and not allowed to express her milk for the child. She instead was sent in intense pain back to her jail cell and was released at 2 a.m. in the morning.

The New York Times did a sizable Sunday piece with picture about the story I broke in July 2008. The Boston Globe editorialized about it. The Daily Kos picked it up. A Google search will show a lot of websites recognized the brutality in the case and published my series of accounts.

So other than that, I can't really point to anything the blog has done to make a difference.

But I still continue it, for the 37 subscribers and 12 reach(whatever that means) that are daily registered on Feedburner. The site only gets 25 hits each two and a half hours from across the nation, Canada and Sweden. That's not a lot.

Yes, my efforts probably are futile. I'm certainly no Jim Hopkins and www.gannettblog.blogspot.com. But I'm wasting no one's time or money except my own.

So pray for me or pity me. Either will do fine.