Continued: Rene Sanchez: A town square for the 21st century

What do a conservative rabbi, a Latina rapper and a Marine who served in Iraq have in common?

They are all part of a new adventure in blogging at the Star Tribune that we're calling "Your Voices.''

Starting this week, our website will showcase a collection of new blogs that we've created for notable people from all walks of life in our community -- from political and religious figures, to artists and writers, to a college student leader and a women's hockey coach.

Think of it as a 21st-century town square.

You'll be reading blogs by acclaimed Minneapolis songwriter Dan Wilson, Edina cookbook author Paulette Mitchell and the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches. Independence Party leader Dean Barkley is on board, and so is classical singer Maria Jette. The local author Joel Turnipseed, a veteran of the Iraq war, will be blogging, and so will Fedwa Wazwaz, a Muslim educator.

So far, we've enlisted about 20 volunteers -- but the roster for Your Voices will surely grow.

At least once a week, they'll be writing about ... well, just about anything they want. We aren't starting with many rules, just urging them to share thoughts or tell stories about their lives and professions, to weigh in on news and issues around the Twin Cities, to reflect on this extraordinary time in our country. Some of them will be putting photos and video on their blogs, too.

Sometimes we'll also ask all of them the same question and see what kind of online community forum emerges -- then publish excerpts of the conversation in the local news section of the newspaper.

Some of them are already hard at work on our website. Andrew Eklund, an Internet pioneer who's the CEO of the local web marketing company Ciceron, has kicked off his new blog at Your Voices with a tough question: Is our growing addiction to the Internet and its social media tools (Facebook, Twitter and so on) throwing our home lives out of proper balance?

"On any given evening I will be cooking a nice meal for my family (using Epicurious on my laptop as my go-to online recipe book), only to see that pesky blinking red light on the Blackberry enticing me to click away. And I usually do,'' Eklund writes. "That's until last week. I made a personal moratorium on Twittering, Facebooking or even general internet surfing while my duties are to be full-time father and husband.''

Meanwhile, in his blogging debut, Barkley takes on critics who say he spoiled the U.S. Senate race for their candidate. "Was it un-American for the 500,000 or so Minnesota voters to have voted for me?'' he writes. "Were they all idiots that ruined Al Franken's day or were they patriotic Americans doing their duty by voting for the person that they thought best represented their interests?"

You can find those blog posts and all the others we're introducing at www.startribune.com/yourvoices.

"The response has been terrific,'' said Rhonda Prast, our community engagement editor (rhonda.prast@startribune.com). Rhonda has been developing Your Voices for the past month, contacting dozens of well-known or just plain interesting people who call the Twin Cities home and asking them to lend their hearts and minds to this endeavor.

Our goal for Your Voices is simple. "We want to have a diversity of outside voices and create a lively public discussion,'' Rhonda said.

But there's another important point driving the idea: The days of a newspaper having mostly a one-way conversation with its readers are over. And we want to do more than just open our stories and our staff-written blogs to public comments. This is a step to seek out and amplify the collective wisdom of the crowd -- in this case, local people you may know, or ought to know, and whose voices form the fabric of our community.

So take a look; see what you think. We hope you find the new blogs compelling. And let us know who else should join in. We'll tell them you sent us.

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