Eagle Mountain Councilman blogs the good, bad and ugly
Caleb Warnock - DAILY HERALD
Looking for the good, the bad, and the ugly in Eagle Mountain? One councilman here has a blog for you. Over the past three years, DavidLifferth.com, owned by the city's namesake councilman, has drawn nearly 300,000 page views from 84 countries by tracking all things Eagle Mountain.
Lifferth is hoping more elected officials will follow his lead into cyberspace.
"People just like someone who is going to be open about government," he said. "If I was not on the council, I would want someone who was in the know to blog and talk about things."
"This blogging that I have done consistently for four years now has forced me to read, understand, and explain the good, the bad, and the ugly here in Eagle Mountain," Lifferth wrote in a recent e-mail to his fans. "I have been praised for my openness and candor while at the same time I have been threatened with a half dozen lawsuits for my openness. This openness and candor caused the readership of my blog to been massive."
Lifferth said his site "has frequently been the most read Web site in all of Eagle Mountain and surrounding areas. My Web site frequently had more page views than Eagle Mountain City's site, the local newspapers sites covering Eagle Mountain, blog and forum sites, and any of the developers' sites."
All this attention is one of the best things that could happen to city government, he said.
"The quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis comes to mind: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.'"
Lifferth said one of the highest compliments paid his site came from a friend who said "the bad guys fear your Web site."
Lifferth is not exactly a cyber newbie, so to speak. He runs about 30 online sites, earning money from advertising on most, if not all, though he does not make money from his site dedicated to city politics, he said.
To draw readers, he makes sure his posts are enticing. Take this recent example: "Reagan Caused Global Warming," a post which documents why, in Lifferth's view, a significant cause of the statistical increase in average global temperature has been the reduction in temperature reporting stations in the former Soviet Union" and Reagan's role in that.
Getting 500 hits a day, Lifferth's most lucrative site is surprisingly -- not political at all -- it is a James Bond fan site, 007BondMovies.ning.com. He also runs JunkScience.ning.com and PonyExpress.ning.com, to name a few.
Lifferth said he tries to have fun with his sites. During his interview with the Daily Herald, he surprised this reporter by bringing up a photo on his Web site of this reporter perusing a competitor's weekly newspaper during a slow moment in an Eagle Mountain City Council meeting. Lifferth said he took the photo from the council dais during the meeting using his cellphone. This reporter never even knew the photo existed.
"You've taken some jabs at me and once in a while I want to take some jabs back," he said with a laugh. "... I do think I have fun with my site. I have a playful attitude."
Jokes aside, every elected official should consider blogging as a way to give information directly to the public, he said. At least several Web sites allow anyone to set up their own blog for free, so getting started is easy.
"I think elected officials should talk about what the issues are, and why things are happening," he said, noting some elected officials in Utah Valley are starting to follow suit, including council members from Payson and Saratoga Springs.
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