Damn. A favourite blog – London Connections – has suddenly decided to give up the ghost.
It was a site that fed a minor obsession of mine – and, I’m sure, thousands of other Londoners . It told us what, on earth, was going on with all the changes to London’s public transport. Although I didn’t always understand some of the technical diagrams of track layouts, and sometimes it wasn’t even relevant to my routes, I loved the detail and the greater understanding of the complexities of transport planning it gave me. (I know, I know. I am a geek).
The links to public documents about railways works were, in themselves, a valuable civic service that no news organisation provided. It was a site that, far away from all the balls spoken about citizen journalism, proved the huge value of narrow, niche publishing on the web. Just look at the number of comments on the final post to see what value it brought. It was all produced by a blogger who was, I think, anonymous.
But now it’s dead – a risk, I guess, with something powered by passion, not profit. I hope that perhaps the author will take a break, and choose to return, but there’s an air of finality about the final post.
Damn, again.
