Walter Neary was elected to the city council in Lakewood in 2004. He's also contributed news articles and columns to local newspapers for more than a decade, and produced his own email newsletter, so it makes perfect sense that he would author an informative blog (called Neary-Sighted).

Neary began sending out email bulletins to people in 2003 when he was running for city council. He was the editor of The Lakewood Journal back in the mid-1990s. I asked him about his experience with the blog. Like a lot of bloggers, he found gaps in the flow of information that weren't being filled by the current news publications available. Here's his take:

Because Lakewood doesn't have a weekly print paper, it is much harder for people in Lakewood to know what is going on. It drives me crazy, and more importantly, frustrates me for every reason that I became a reporter, that every week five or six great weekly newspaper stories of great significance go by in Lakewood without being written. People in Gig Harbor, in Puyallup, in Federal Way all know vastly more about what is going on at the very detailed level in their cities than the people of Lakewood. I hate that.

Neary noted that Lakewood's e-paper, The Suburban Times, is "a valiant and useful effort to break through the information wall as well." But the lack of a traditional weekly newspaper focusing on the hyperlocal issues of the Lakewood community leaves Neary, and presumably his blog's readers, wanting for more.

If you fall in that category, check him out.