Websites Battle For Woodstock's Hearts, Minds Hartford Courant
By Rick Green
.....Out here in the sleepy "Quiet Corner," everyone, it seems, is going online with an opinion, a video or some inside dope about local schools and the referendum today that seeks to oust the board of education.
But this is no friendly chat. It's often anonymous and highly opinionated....
....Much has changed since Woodstockctcafe.com and Woodstocktruth.com began taking each other on.
"I've been here 20 years. There was nothing. Everybody got their information through the local grapevine," said Craig Powers, who in 2008 created Woodstocktruth.com, now the arch-enemy of the older and more popular Woodstockctcafe.com.
Powers jumped in after the remarkable success of Woodstockctcafe.com, a website that has anywhere from 400 to 1,000 "unique visitors" each day — impressive numbers for an all-volunteer, no-advertising website aimed at "all things Woodstock," a town of 8,000.
I stopped by to talk with John Leavitt, who along with his wife Becki, provides the energy behind the impressive Woodstockctcafe.com. A molecular biologist who moved here from Palo Alto, Calif., 13 years ago, Leavitt told me he stumbled into the blogosphere and hasn't looked back.
"When we started this nobody went to the board of education website. Nobody went to the town website," Leavitt told me. "Our website was unique. All of a sudden you could talk back."
"It's hair-raising. Anybody is free to come and attack you. We are talking about our neighbors. It's very polarizing," Leavitt said. The "big payoff," he told me, is "all of a sudden you really understand how things work here."....
....."The cafe has been a tremendous venue for all different viewpoints. This has been such a lesson in how democracy works best. The more information you can get out to people the better decision any board or commission will make."
At Woodstocktruth, Paul is viewed as part of an "empire building crusade." Powers recently wrote that his rivals are a "website commissioned by the BOE ... where dissenters are openly trashed when challenging the propaganda purveyed there under anonymous pen names."
"I back everything I say with documents and video," Powers told me. "Right now the question is who has the high ground on who has the truth in this town?"......
....."There's a phenomenon that's happening. It's in its infancy," said Steve Rosendahl, a board of education member who favors Woodstocktruth.com. The Internet has "given regular people like myself the power that we wouldn't have had five years ago.".......
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