I’m in southwest WA....sounds like a great idea to me!
There has never been an easier time to introduce friends, friends of our teenage kids, and social acquantances to Free Republic. There's a friend of mine that's been listening to Seattle news outlets for years, and it had got to the point where he uses me for a factcheck on national news, as I usually have more pieces to the story.
I finally sat him down for a couple hours one night and went through a couple dozen different topics, many with multiple sources that added to the complete picture, and ALL with links to those sources. He liked the verifiable multiple source aspect, and he commented that "the more sources, the more credibility".
Then I showed him what I've been telling him for years, how an AP story by some unknown stringer in the middle east will write his version of an event, and the next morning almost every news outlet in the country will be running the identical story by the same previously unheard of Arab stringer, often with a political keyword or phrase tossed in the mix.
We looked for any other sources to back up the event - nothing. I also showed him a heck of a lot of stuff that should be in the news, such as anything positive out of our military endeavors, especially considering all the military bases in our state ~ zippo.