We don’t usually cover news outside of Burley, but I felt that this was a very important story due to the amount of people in our area who have friends and family in Hawaii, California, Samoa and other pacific regions that could be effected. I am including a Live video feed of what is currently taking place.

Webcam chat at Ustream

Just a quick reminder that the Burley High School Play Issun Boshi is hitting the Stage tonight and for the rest of the week. You can read more about Burley HIgh’s Issun Boshi Here

Mike Ramsey

Journalism has been evolving dramatically since the creation of the internet. A “journalist” used to have to be hired by a big news company, and ultimately had to write stories a certain way. Stories were covered with little, or no personal opinion, and you were given supposed facts from both sides. Now, overtime, this system has been gamed and many felt that they were getting unbiased news, but ultimately stories still took on an “angle”.

Well, since the dawn of the blogsphere, things have changed. Now, a large amount of the news that people read on a daily basis are from news blogs that are written by non traditional folks. The reporting is fresh, honest, opinionated, and exciting. The best part is that the journalist are usually just really “into” what they are talking about, and that passion is spread like wildfire to the readers.

So, why am I writing this? Originally, GoBurley was going to try a more traditional approach to reporting news and stories, the only problem is that I am about as nontraditional as it gets in my opinion of how news, politics, and opinions should be presented. I also feel that our community really needs some diverse publications to balance out the local news coverage of places like The Weekly Mailer/Journal, Times News, and KBAR. I have learned by experience that diversity is the true blessing of democracy.

With all that in mind, GoBurley has taken a change in direction.

First: We have teamed up with the Burley High School Student Council To Diversify Reporting. You are going to start and see more and more students from the community covering sporting events, local happenings, and even writing columns like Kolby’s Corner.  This is going to serve as a great business learning experience for the youth, and also prove the level of quality that our local students truly have. With Budget cuts to schools on the horizon, this will also help to give some money back to the school system on a donation basis from GoBurley’s Ad Revenue. This site will never make anyone rich, but if it can help a few kids go on a field-trip, or even have a pizza party for work well done, then it is worth the effort.

Second: The reporting is going to real. Packed full of personality, facts, and opinion. Burley Sporting events are going to be written like we want the other team to lose and ours to win, bad politics are going to be called out, good acts in the community are going to be commended. Journalism 2.0 has swept our nation by storm and proved that people area ready for a different style of reporting. The wonderful thing about the internet is that literally everyone can have their voice heard. If you don’t like Journalism 2.0 practices, you don’t have to visit the website. I am not in the business of bombarding every mailbox with a paper on a weekly basis (though I have thought heavily about it) and anyone always have the option to start their own blog and report how they would like. That is the wonderful thing about this nation, freedom of speech is for everyone and not just mainstream media.

Third: GoBurley would love for a large amount of the websites content to come from the community. I am asking for people to talk about real issues, real awards, real recognitions, real opinions, and use real names. I think there is a place for disagreement, and I will personally agree/disagree with a lot of things. But, I will make sure that you know it is my opinion. The best part is that every article published on this site has a comment section that can be used to express understanding and opinion, and balance out issues. We saw a great example of that when the Weekly Mailer Boycott was covered on this site. There were people that agreed, disagreed and everything in between. But, the comments were civil and “ideal” based.  So, if you have a story that you want to see on GoBurley.com, send it in to goburley@gmail.com.

Overall, I am looking forward to an exciting year with GoBurley and other news projects. I want to thank you for your support through this last 4 months that brought in a total of 17, 411 pageviews. I look for that number to go up, and for GoBurley to become the place to visit for anything happening in our great community.

Mike Ramsey

Below are the final ballot counts for the 2009 City Council and Mayor election.

Mayor:

Terry Greenman 908 votes

Jon Anderson 449 votes

City Council:

Casey Andersen 997 Votes

Steven McGill 677 votes

Gordon Hansen 602 votes

Dennis Dexter 535 votes

Donald Dean 475 votes

Randy Golay 438 votes

Number of voters… 1366

New Registered Voters… 72

Absentee… 56

On Thursday, October 15th, 2009 The Weekly News Journal published an article entitled “What People Earn”. The article outlines public employee salaries in the Mini-Cassia area which included city employees, all school employees, Minidoka hospital employees, and numerous other organizations. The article highlighted the top 10 salaries in both counties, and had numerous quotes from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Aristotle.

Continue Reading

It was a beautiful evening for football at the mountain stadium in Hailey last night.  It was the battle of the Green and white, but both teams came out with long pink stockings.   Many of the Wood River fans were sporting pink to draw attention to a teacher at the high school who is battling cancer.  The Bobcats got word of this and Sheri Greener whipped up a washing machine full of white socks, soon to become pink for the occasion.  The Wood River crowd was pleased by this. Continue Reading

A two car collision caused a temporary loss of power for a few hundred Burley residents and businesses Thursday evening when one of the cars split a power pole in half. According to firemen on the scene the crash happened just before 7 pm when a SUV driven by a teenage driver was going north on Oakley Avenue and hit another car headed west on 16th Street.

The car that was struck spun a number of times before it crashed into the wooden pole and stopped in the yard of a nearby home. Officials released the teenage driver and a teenage passenger to one of their mothers to be taken to the hospital for possible injuries. The driver of the other car was not hurt. The impact caused a water line in the yard to erupt as well as leave the live power cables dangling over the sidewalk parallel to the street. Burley electrical crews worked for about an hour to restore power to Burley residents near the intersection of 16th street and Overland Avenue.

Reported by Kim Seely