Since its inception three years ago, the Lowell's blog (blog.lowells.us) has been a strange beast.
It has been an admixture of news about Lowell's, tips for car maintenance, thoughts about business and the economy, and assorted commentary on our community, on downtown, and on the city of Lexington.
While this assortment was in line with our stated intent to offer "our perspectives on cars, business, Lexington, and life," it also resulted in a divided audience: those who care about cars and what is happening at Lowell's (usually customers); and those who care about more civic matters.
As you might imagine, the practical overlap between these groups is quite small. The car folks probably don't care about musings on CentrePointe or Lexington's streets and roads. The civic folks probably don't care about what's happening with the Lowell's website or how a brake flush works.
Still, I could kind of rationalize the Lowell's blog as a local blog by, for, and about a local business and local issues.
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I have been the sole contributor to the Lowell's blog. And over the past year or so, my postings have been far less frequent than I'd like.
Part of that has to do with the busy-ness of our business (I haven't had as much time to devote to writing), but most of it lies in the fact that I've been wanting to write about new and different things.
In particular, I've wanted to shift my focus from predominantly local issues to predominantly national and global ones - to try, for instance, to decode what's happening in Washington or Wall Street from my own distinct perspective. These topics just didn't feel at home among car care tips and shop news.
At the same time, I've wanted to extend the content of the Lowell's blog to include new contributions and new kinds of content from my employees here at Lowell's. As I contemplated such a move, I didn't want them to feel overshadowed by strongly-expressed views which they might not share.
To resolve this dilemma, I've created a new blog called CivilMechanics (www.civilmechanics.com) - sponsored by Lowell's - in which I will express my unique perspectives on a variety of issues. (And, yes, "CivilMechanics" is an intentional multiple-entendre. I like that kind of stuff.) Please check out our first post, "Confessions of a Job Creator".
I've also taken the liberty of migrating a few old Lowell's posts to CivilMechanics which capture some of the spirit of this new blog.
Over the coming weeks, we'll introduce new contributors to the Lowell's blog. I'll also continue to post on the Lowell's blog from time to time with items of interest to Lowell's customers and Lexingtonians.
With these changes, I'm hoping to increase our overall frequency of posts, both for customers (through the Lowell's blog) and for civic-minded followers (through CivilMechanics). Please check them out, and be sure to let us know how we're doing.
The Lowell's Blog: blog.lowells.us
CivilMechanics: www.civilmechanics.com
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