We are officially one year old today. My hat’s off to my fellow frontpagers (especially hotflash) who continue to churn out good content every day. It’s a lot harder than it looks.

Last spring, hotflash and I started talking about switching from the blog she wrote at the time, which commented on national news, and shift to a community blog covering events in state politics. After bringing Blue Girl and Michael aboard, and a few bumps along the way, we posted this, this, and this on August 6th, 2008.

So what are we doing here? Everyone has their own reasons for blogging, but I laid my own out in my second diary, five days after we began. I have a lot of disagreements with Matt Stoller, but I still believe blogging and online activism offers a great opportunity along the lines of what says here:

Civic participation is a key tenet of how we built our media and political apparatus. We are demanding low barriers to entry in the political system, a way for everyone to participate, and more open cultural structures, including business, agriculture, and government.

You don’t have to pay to get in. There are no barriers to entry here – all you have to do is care. Anyone can write a diary or comment or read what others have to say about political developments in their own neck of the woods or across the state. Anyone can disagree, and back up their own observations with research. (Technical proficiency should not be a barrier. If you are having problems commenting or writing diaries, let me know at eric [AT] showmeprogress.com, and I’ll walk you through it.)