Alex Tavlian, The Daily Dues
“Fresno is very decentralized and is in an ugly state of sprawl.”
Alex Tavlian, center, hosting the chili-eating contest at the Fresno Chile Festival.
Meet Alex Tavlian. He writes for The Daily Dues, which comments and reports on the current events, politics and sports of Fresno. This Fresno native attends Fresno City College and writes for The Fresno Bee as a student reporter.
CREATING THE DAILY DUES
Alex says he got the idea for The Daily Dues when he attended a journalism workshop at Cal Poly of San Luis Obispo in 2009. In some of his earliest posts, he covered that workshop. He then wrote several pieces about Fresno’s failed downtown and continued to expand his focus to local politics, downtown events and the Fresno Grizzlies.
It was difficult for him to attract an audience for his blog. “Until I discovered the value of Twitter,” he says, “I struggled to figure out who I wanted to gear my perspective toward.” He learned early on that is important to write a variety of posts, to shoot photos and to customize your own web layout when you start a blog. He also advises bloggers to learn and code HTML and CSS. He learned these from W3schools.
Alex enjoys having a blog, because it allows hims to stay inform and write about Fresno at the same time, that thee greatest upside to maintaining a blog are the people he meets. “You get to meet some fantastic people and learn about the community,” he says. “It wasn’t until I started covering the Grizzlies I realized that.”
He thinks there is only one downside. “Bloggers are seen as people who live in their parent’s basement and rarely have an accurate perception of their niche.”
HELP WANTED
Alex plans to report on the 2012 election in a feature called The Ticket 2012. “I’m looking forward to giving some perspective to the 2012 election cycle, from the mayoral race to the presidential election.”
Alex would also like more Fresno area writers and photographers to contribute to The Daily Dues. If you’re interested, contact him at [email protected].
FRESNO, AN ACTIVE BLOGOSPHERE
Alex realized that Fresno had a very active blogging community when he started the feature now called Blog Fresno. It profiles “the best Fresno bloggers.”
He thinks it is important for Fresnans to continue to interact online. Fresno, he believes, relies heavily on the media and constantly needs information and opinions. Blogs provide residents with a different perspective from the traditional news by writing about more obscure, but more interesting, things.
OPINIONS ON FRESNO
Alex admires Fresno for having the “small town fell with big city connections.” He adds that, while the Fresno area houses nearly one million people, the residents are still very interconnected.”
Alex says the downside of Fresno is that the city is “very decentralized and is in an ugly state of sprawl.” Fresno, he believes, has a weak downtown. To strengthen downtown, he says, it is important to make it more accessible through free and plentiful parking. He also suggests that the Fulton Mall should be established as a central commerce area in downtown. Adding a variety of stores and restaurants and opening up the area to car traffic would bring more residents to the area, he says.
What do you think? Do you agree that Fresno is a large city with the small town feel?
Have a lovely day in Fresno!
Veronica Stumpf
Good stuff. Some very accurate observations, but a little parroting. DT has pleanty of parking. Some of it is free, and that that is not, is affordable. “Interconnectivity” is definitely the right track. Keep looking. The answer is there, and like your education, it is not free either.
Thank you for your response. Brent. It gets a little boring when everyone agrees, eh?
I’ll talk to you later about your interesting perspective on Fresno!
Fresno does have an active blogging community. From the seminal Fresno Blog, Fresno Famous, to Dum Drum and That Fresno Blog, Fresno enjoys top commentary and local insight from a number of blogging sites. I personally enjoy reading current developments, new perspectives and insights about Fresno.
Before I started looking into creating a blog, I was under the impression that nobody wanted to highlight the good and the bad of Fresno. I quickly realized how wrong I was.
It is lovely reading the content of the sites you mentioned above, including your blog, Dan.