The Birder’s United bi-weekly online news letter touted LocustFork.Net as a “great Website for birders” on Tuesday, Feb. 27.

A Web site that may be of great interest to members of Birders United is LocustFork.net. The site covers a wide selection of issues of interest to birders including a news column and Weblog.

There is also a photography section. Note particularly the feature on the birds of Alabama. More than 71,000 people visit the site each month.

A Great Web Site for Birders

Thanks for the kudos…

Now that we have been written up alongside other political bloggers in Alabama, we decided to add a section to the Locust Fork News page called “Alabama Political Roundup,” where we will be watching the press in Alabama to see how well they perform in covering the upcoming elections. We also added another section called “Columns of Note,” where we will be watching the newspaper columnists in the state to see how much effort they put into their work in the coming months.

Dana Beyerle

There are times when I think Tommy Stevenson at the Tuscaloosa News is the best editorial columnist left in this state since the passing of Birmingham Post-Herald reporter and columnist Ted Bryant. I always enjoyed running into Stevenson at Jazzfest and the Maple Leaf bar on Oak Street in New Orleans every year in my old neighborhood. Maybe one of these days he will have something to say about this blog, since I know he gets my e-mails and surely reads it from time to time.

I used to work alongside Mobile Register editorial page editor Francis Coleman back in the 1980s, when she was a correspondent for the Baldwin Register out of Foley and I worked for Gulf Coast Newspapers out of Gulf Shores. She is a good reporter, a decent writer and a nice person - although I used to beat her on a regular basis on big stories.

She made fun of me one time for the motor drive on my old Olympus 35 mm camera at the new City Hall in Orange Beach. I wonder what she thinks of the photos I take now with my new Nikon D50? Maybe one of these days she will return one of my e-mails.

As for Dana Beyerle, the Montgomery correspondent for the three New York Times-owned newspapers in Tuscaloosa, Florence and Gadsden, he has always been generous with the Reporter’s Notebooks when I show up in Montgomery free-lancing. He was misidentified as a female PR person in the New York Times obituary of George C. Wallace a few years back, a correction I had to call in myself to Howell Raines’ assistant in New York.

It will be fun to talk about the press on this blog from time to time - in the interest of letting the public get to know them better.

Searching for an early wire story on the Cotton Bowl, this popped up. Turns out the Associated Press picked up Taylor Bright’s story on Alabama political blogs…

Political blogs pop up in Alabama

Our apologies for the temporary server outage, and especially to the readers of the Sunday Huntsville Times.

Apparently the NSA knocked out our server in Knoxville, Tennessee, overnight last night after midnight
They’re irreverent, sometimes funny and under nobody’s control but their creators’. The Alabama political scene has made it to the big time: blogs. In the past year, several blogs devoted to Alabama politics have begun offering a new way for political junkies to get their fix.

… others sites, such as www.locustfork.net, feature a broad offering of opinion from the site’s operator and a grouping of headlines from other news sources he thinks are important.

Locustfork operator Glynn Wilson calls blogs “the new printing press.” And many of the blogs cover politics.

“A lot of people who get in this blogging business are interested in politics,” Wilson said. “That tends to be a lot of the audience - your news junkies and your political junkies; they tend to go online and look for stuff like this.”

Read the full story from this link.

Web sites report news, give opinions on issues, candidates in races

Notice how fast you get to the print version of this article without having to wade through the entire al.com interface to find it. That is one of the major benefits of using sites like LocustFork.Net on a regular basis.

As the big mainstream media and legacy press continue to fatten up their Web sites with more slow ads and pesky popup ads, not to mention those things called “cookies” made famous by the AP NSA story this week, more online readers will turn to a site like the Locust Fork News to negotiate the Web.

Whether you agree with every point of view published here or not, you should admit that this site provides an incredibly fast and efficient set of links. If you think we are missing a critical link you like to go to on a daily or weekly basis, let us know and we will try to find room for it.

Cheers and enjoy the rest of your New Year’s Day.

If you must read more about Alabama politics today, we also recommend Taylor Bright’s piece in the Huntsville Times.

Alabama Election Year Expected to Draw a Crowd

Former state Chief Justice Roy Moore, because of his stand on displaying the Ten Commandments on public property, is already bringing national attention to the state as he tries to defeat Gov. Bob Riley for the Republican nomination for governor.

Then, here’s a rare Sports Update: Catch Alabama v. Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl

We don’t tend to cover a lot of sports on this site, but if you are not too hung over to turn on the TV or the radio at 10 a.m. CDT Monday, Jan. 2, 2006, turn to the local Fox affiliate or check your local or online radio listings and see how the Alabama Crimson Tide fares against Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

I will bet one six pack of Yuengling Black and Tan right now that the Tide will win this one to make up for the disappointing losses to LSU and Auburn that destroyed what otherwise could have been a great comeback season for the UA football program.

Cotton Bowl: Alabama vs. Texas Tech - Tide seniors look back on four seasons of turmoil at Alabama

Roll !@#$%^& Tide!

A reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser called me the other day while working on a story trying to understand blogs and whether they should have the same rights as “the press” under the First Amendment. This story is the result.

Glynn Wilson traded in his newspaper editor for a high-speed modem and a blog. The former reporter for The New York Times knows he can get news to readers quicker than any paper delivery boy, and he said the communication medium is a new form of journalism. The Birmingham-area writer is one of thousands of people nationwide who have started sites on the Internet that link viewers to news and allow readers to comment on what is commonly referred to as a blog, or Web log.

Full Story: Bloggers Court Mainstream, Seek Rights