The World is Talking. Global Politics

Nope. This isn't about the shady deals pols make in smoky backrooms. It's about hyperlinks and stereotypes.

The Springfield News-Leader is trying hard to make the web work as an interactive medium for its traditional, mainstream news product. I commend them for this effort. It isn't easy for a number of reasons.

OK...here comes the BUT part. Why do these two things: 1) Hide the links to your two newest community blogs (Ozarks Left and Ozarks Right); and 2) Try to cram the complicated political experiences of our community into two simplistic, divisive, stereotypical boxes?

Click the link to the News-Leader front page. Give yourself a pat on the back if you can find a link to these blogs in less than five minutes. Try not to let the garish colors distract you. Or, go to the opinion section of the site and try to find any links at all to these blogs. Curiously, you won't find them in the section called Blog Zone.

Editorial Page Editor Tony Messenger has been working hard to beef up the community conversation in the Voices section of the print product. The section is robust, enlightening, infuriating, maddening, and delicious. The web portion must expand on this. Being interactive is a given.

Here's what I propose: Stop with the divisive and oh-so-typical right-left dichotomy and create a single, community political blog with the same contributors. This would allow for more cross conversation. And it would properly allow all the complication and nuance of the bloggers' positions to be understood by readers outside of a confining frame, i.e. one might read an opinion a bit differently if not slapped with a (tired) political label.

Oh, and put a prominent link on a newly designed front page. Something like this would look nice.