Mannakee Circle Group

An example of a robust community created around a blog. The key to success here is maintaining the proper characteristics of the community so it remains inviting and useful.

Mannakee Circle Group president Brad Rourke is the founder of Rockville Central, a site he began in June 2007 to serve as a test bed for different methods of engaging. It is maintained by Brad and by Cindy Cotte Griffiths. Over slightly more than two years, Rockville Central has become the second most-read local blog in Maryland. It is a key civic destination for people throughout Rockville. Political leaders routinely turn to Rockville Central to talk directly to citizens and discuss important issues facing the city.

Rockville Central embodies a number of paradoxes. It draws from the civic journalism movement, but it is not a journalist-driven site. It is a blog, but with a civic sensibility. It has a civic mission, but it is not a nonprofit good-government advocacy site.

Above all, though, Rockville Central is built on three main civic ideas:

a) People should be treated as citizens foremost, and not as readers, voters, or consumers;

b) Given a space with the right conditions, most people will act in the community's best interest;

c) Many people do not get involved with public life because there appears to be .no easy way in

Rockville Central has proved the worth of these principles and more, as numerous residents of this city of 50,000 have used it as a stepping stone into a new relationship with public life.