Who We Are And Our Civic Values

Gentle readers,>

Of late, a number of things have happened that made me realize it might be useful to talk a little bit about what Rockville Central is and what we aspire to be.

I don’t know if it’s the full moon or what, but there have been a number of controversial issues in the air. I’ve gotten a number of “back channel” emails that purport to reveal inner workings of things, and I have by the same token gotten some emails that complain about perceived slights, or point out that the Washington Post does a better job at reporting.

So, here’s the deal.

Rockville Central is not a newspaper, nor an official information source. Rockville Central is a volunteer effort, done in spare time. We emphatically are NOT in competition with any newspaper, such as our friends at the Gazette. (If we were, we wouldn’t link to them so much!) We don’t make any claims to journalistic objectivity nor to completeness. We just try our best to let you know what is going on as best we can.

Given that, we rely on readers to let us know if we get something wrong. Where we make errors of fact, we are happy to update articles so the correct information is in there.

We are not the only source in town, so we can’t include everything. Sometimes I feel like people are disappointed that a particular event or news item did not get covered. We can’t be everywhere.

As we don’t pretend to be reporters, we also don’t pretend that we are objective. Yes we have opinions. We try to be transparent about them and we try not to let them get in the way of letting people know the facts. We try to be diligent about tagging our opinion as “opinion.”

Even more important, we also rely on readers to let us know when they disagree with us. We depend on you posting comments and speaking up! I recently received some emails seeking “retractions” on issues that I thought were really judgment calls. When I suggested to the writers that they post comments or even submit “contributor opinions” for consideration, many declined. The more voices are on Rockville Central, the better. That may mean that we disagree with one another on occasion, sometimes strongly. That’s OK. We all live in the same wonderful town.

We aren’t looking for scoops. Sometimes people send us “inside information.” I usually do nothing, but just keep it in mind to help me understand context. Still, I often worry that the sender is watching and waiting for the information to come out, because they gave us a scoop. But we don’t have the same motivations and aspirations that a newspaper does. We’re trying to be helpful to the community. Sometimes that entails publishing information that some would rather not have out there. But, just as often, it entails being sensitive to what might be hurtful, or what not everyone necessarily needs to hear. Yes, we do get that fine line wrong on occasion — we are human.

We aren’t looking for traffic per se. I recently posted an article about the good traffic statistics we had last year. I may have inadvertently left the impression that we care deeply about that. Nope. When I started Rockville Central, my image was that it would be akin to a small, mimeographed newsletter shared on a neighborhood block. I really did not imagine more than 30 or 40 people might ever read. We value helpfulness and civic-mindedness. The increases in traffic are gratifying, but only insofar as they are indicators that others in the community hold similar aspirations and values.

We don’t attack anybody. Some blogs are devoted to skewering public figures or grinding a particular axe. Rockville Central is not that kind of place. We want this to be the kind of space where we can all talk together. We don’t want anything here that someone would not say to another’s face. (Along those lines, it’s important to note that we have never yet declined to run a Contributor Opinion, but if one were too over the top we would definitely do so.)

Okay, I have gone on long enough. I just thought it important to get some of these ideas out there. As Rockville Central grows, my chief concern is that it maintain the civic qualities with which it started. Sometimes you need to stand up and declare what you stand for, as much for your own guidance as for others’. This felt like one of those times.

Thanks for listening.

Yours,

Brad Rourke
Publisher

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