On January 19, 2003, I decided to
take a bunch of photos of the area south of the Southeast Freeway, and then came home and posted them on my personal web site. No grand plans for hyperlocal journalism or neighborhood blogging--I'd just heard there were plans to revitalize the neighborhood (even though I didn't even know what the area was called), and wanted to have a few pictures of what it looked like "
before." And then I created a page of links for myself so that I could keep an eye on the various projects without having to dig through my bookmarks.
And now here we are.
There's too much going on in the city right now to really pay much attention to this little anniversary, but I couldn't let it go by completely unmarked. I'll look back over the past year and look ahead at what's {probably not} coming in 2009 within the next few days, but until then, Happy Anniversary to me. And a big thanks to everyone who reads the site and who send tips or feedback--this site never would have grown into the monstrosity it's become if I hadn't discovered that people were actually interested in what was being posted.
(And, as a useless aside: astute observers might note that I'm not marking the anniversary of JDLand.com--that's because I've had a JDLand web site since 1996, containing several different online projects of which Near Southeast DC blogging was just one. The root JDLand.com address only became the official Near Southeast web site in 2007, when I finally figured out this particular project was a bigger draw than,say, photos of our kitchen remodel.)
