10 years ago on this date, John Murden created the first post for this website, a mention of a YouTube profile of Pine Street resident, Nathan Motley.
Murden started OregonHill.net because he saw the potential of community news sites after doing his Church Hill People’s News site for a while and wanted to help create more sites for more neighborhoods. In turn, this also played into the aggregation of these sites for RVAnews.com and today, SmallRichmond.com
At the time, as President of the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association, I was very interested in this because I was dealing with a very public controversy regarding VCU’s plans to encroach further into Oregon Hill. While the neighborhood had its own email discussion list (still going, by the way) and a rudimentary website for the neighborhood association, the new OregonHill.net allowed the neighborhood to have its own voice and respond to some of VCU-slanted media coverage. My own first post on this site was August 18, 2007 about Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council volunteers.
Anyway, part of the reason to mention all this is that John Murden has announced that he is planning to step down as editor of the Church Hill People’s News site at the end of the year. Of course, we wish him the best and salute him for all he has done for Church Hill and Richmond in general.
As for the future of OregonHill.net, we shall see. After writing over 4,000 posts, I would welcome new contributors or even assistant editors for the website. I have had a few in the past, but as Murden knows, not everyone sticks with it. More community advertising support would also be welcome.
