My Comment At ShopLocal.com(TM) Blog
I can’t seem to get the guy who runs the ShopLocal.com(TM) blog to un-moderate my comment (although he’s allowed many others through and mine is a reasonable discussion of his post), so I thought I’d try a trackback to it.
This is part of an ongoing discussion — in the Jackson Free Press this past week we ran a story about ShopLocal.com(TM), a service of Gannett newspapers that presents you with online versions of big-box circulars. It seemed to us to be rather a cynical example of “local washing” — large corporate interests claiming to be “local” because they see the trend of people to take an interesting in shopping and buying with locally owned enterprises.
Here’s what I wrote and he won’t open:
To anyone who reads this blog, please consider also reading the full “local-washing” story run by the Jackson Free Press, a story that was syndicated by many local newsweeklies across the country over the past few weeks.
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/index.php/comments/the_local_lie_072909/
You’ll see that Mr. Flanagan’s remonstrations above are exactly the sort of “local-washing” that is being talked about — more and more — thanks to this story and the work of its author and many more like her.
Chain stores create jobs, yes, but the cities and towns where they locate tend to lose more jobs — often better ones — when local businesses shut their doors. It just takes longer to see that effect as the chain slowly kills the local businesses.
How many local drugstores are left in your community? How about lumber yards? Grocers? Electronics stores? Hopefully it’s higher than average, like it is in Jackson — those are often cool places to live.
There’s no such thing as “national-local.” It’s, at best, NewSpeak.
The word Mr. Flanagan may be looking for is “locale.” Shopping in your “locale” is not the same as shopping local, because the measurable benefits are different for a community when you shop local. It’s been studied; it’s been proven.
Quite frankly, it’s the same lesson we’re learning about corporate-owned “locale” newspapers. They simply aren’t invested in their towns. No skin in the game — profits filter up to “corporate”… and directives filter down. Like, for instance, ShopLocal.com(TM).
As to Mr. Flanagan’s claim about ShopLocal.com(TM) in Jackson? Go there. See for yourself.
http://www.shoplocal.com/clarionledger/sales.aspx
NOTHING, aside from ACE (a co-operative owned by its members) is remotely local. Locale? Yes. Many of those chain stores are near where I live.
Locally owned? Re-investing in the community? Giving until it hurts? Ownership mingling with customers and co-workers in church or at soccer games? Nope.
As we say this week in the JFP, it’s not pure evil to shop in chains when you need to or want to. But “Think Local First” is a dictum that I encourage all Americans to take seriously if they’d like to see our economy recover with anything more than service jobs in large “big box” retail stores that source their products from cents-per-day labor.
Shopping with local businesses means more money circulating in your local community, more jobs that stay in this country and, ultimately, a little more charm, character and dignity in the cities and town of the United States.
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