Flat in Deerfield
As I am beginning to understand how and why The World is Flat, I am struck by the different manifestations of flatness. In the book Friedman talks about hierarchical flattening in the military, locational flattening in manufacturing and distribution - out sourcing, home sourcing and just plain sourcing, and informational flattening in news and media. As a reality check I am trying to apply this to my own life.

In my small town of Deerfield a group of us has created our own online newspaper. It has been a lot of work on the part of a dozen or so people. Take a look at it at ForumHome.org. It looks good. As a matter of fact I think it looks as good as the regional paper in towns adjacent to us The Hookset Banner or The Manchester Mirror , both of which are part of the Union Leader group. This is part of a larger movement called citizen journalism . We did not set out to be citizen journalist. As a matter of fact we had not heard the term when we started. In our case there was a convergence of our desire to communicate what was happening locally in an underserved print news area and technology . I think this is the Deerfield version of flatness.