Style Weekly’s Power List is out and rounding out the 75 are a couple familiar names among the RVA blogosphere:

75. Ross Catrow and John Murden

Richmond’s online community has a streak of serious civic engagement because of the infrastructure provided by John Murden and Ross Catrow. Murden built, modeled and then shared his template for neighborhood blogs. Now a dozen outlets across the city keep tabs on micropolitical issues and neighborhood meetings. Catrow’s aggregator, RVAblogs.com, serves as a central clearinghouse for each new post from more than 300 local writers on a myriad of topics, and a rash of play-by-play pregnancy stories. Their innovations have quickly built a new forum, nurtured a fresh pantheon of pundits and welcomed scorekeepers in the arena of public accountability.

Congrats to the gents.

Robert E. Lee was caught watching women dress at the Virginia Center Commons Sears:

First Robert E. Lee lost the Southern cause, now one of his more recent rear-guard actions has him in hot water in Henrico County Circuit Court.

It seems the rears that this Lee — of the 8000 block of Creighton Parkway in Mechanicsville — tried guarding were not among his assigned duties as an assistant manager at the Virginia Center Commons Sears in March 2006.

No, the rears in question were trying on bathing suits in the ladies’ dressing room, above which Lee had taken up a scouting post. The action has already earned Lee two convictions for peeping.

Now Lee’s being sued for $2.7 million — that’s federal currency, not Confederate bonds. The facts: One of Lee’s victims, a pre-pubescent girl, happened to glance up to notice Lee watching her through the ceiling tiles and reported it to store officials.

The Consumerist picked up the story too.

Style Weekly’s Scott Bass has a little ditty this week that cherry picks from River City Rapids as an example of Jon Baliles readiness and presumed eagerness to take a job with Mayor Wilder’s press office. Because, clearly, if you support something you must be looking to get a job with that thing as well.

Where to begin…

Let’s start with the cherry picking. You grab four posts out of three and a half years of blogging and he’s begging for a job? You find four instances where Jon is supportive of the Mayor, one from Jan. 2005, the most recent from Oct. 2007, and this is supposed to be a feeler for employment?

Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Scott’s onto something here. I mean, I wrote an awful lot about IHOP’s Free Pancake Day. Who wouldn’t want to be the spokesman for Free Pancake Day? I could be IHOP’s Jared, only instead of losing a ton of weight by eating their food I’d be the fat guy that became large and in charge thanks to IHOP and their all you can eat pancake special!

Second, minor, but Scott Bass wrote the article and the first quoted post happens to mention, wait for it… a Scott Bass article! Dear Scott, now that I have cited you and an article you wrote, can I expect a piece to be written about me quoting the time I wrote about you? Please? Maybe I can hook you up with free pancakes. (I jest.)

Third, I think Jon’s being honest when he says the offer surprised him and he really had to think about accepting it.

While there certainly are bloggers out there who blog hoping and praying that someone will see their work and hire them on the spot to do what they’ve been doing, many bloggers simply write because they care about something. Jon cares about Richmond and at times he has found himself in agreement with Mayor Wilder on how to exactly “care about Richmond”. But I’m pretty sure there’s more to Jon than just his blog. Just as there is more to any number of bloggers who have been offered professional jobs in fields they blogged about (Conaway Haskins, John Henke, and Shaun Kenney to name a few).

Style and Scott have a right to pick on Jon a bit. That’s fine. But it’d have been nice if they provided the full URL to River City Rapids in the article and provided Style readers an opportunity to visit RCR and see for themselves how much Jon cares not for Doug Wilder but for the City of Richmond and its people.

Jason Roop, editor of Style Weekly, has commented on Style’s withdrawing of their sponsorship of the Environmental Film Festival in light of its organizer’s past ties to the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front:

I can only speak to the editorial side of Style Weekly in saying that our team is covering the festival, as we always would, whether or not the magazine is a sponsor of that event. I hope you’ll enjoy a story in today’s Arts & Culture section that features an exclusive Q&A with Ralph Nader. You also may have noticed that we’ve published a cover story profile by writer Brent Baldwin on John Wade.

It’s an interesting story that explores some of the controversial debates among those in the environmental movement, and the drastically different approaches to making change by the more mainstream as well as radical organizations. We share what inspired Mr. Wade to his cause, and how his perspectives have changed.

No, he doesn’t quite apologize for his and his friends’ actions — which include inflicting more than $200,000 in damage locally and intimidating residents. But he does discuss how he’s struggling with ways to further his cause since serving three years in federal prison. Brent Baldwin also writes about the Patriot Act and how it affected Mr. Wade’s situation, which included the government naming him as an “eco-terrorist.”

You should know that Style Weekly has served as a sponsor of these kinds of events before, including spearheading the first “Living Green” awards (did you go?) in October, corresponding with a special Green Issue of Home Style, our monthly home magazine. Unfortunately, Mr. Wade intentionally withheld significant, relevant information about himself (as he says) in securing support and sponsorship. That put the company in a poor position when it learned, last-minute, about Mr. Wade’s background. As you can imagine, this left the decision-makers wondering what else they hadn’t been told about the event, if anything. It’s too bad that Mr. Wade wasn’t up front from the beginning.

By the way, the company’s sponsorship was in the form of reduced-rate advertising. So its decision to suspend sponsorship included giving money back to Mr. Wade’s group, not taking it away. I know that Style’s publisher and Mr. Wade have spoken in the days since and have come to an understanding, and perhaps they can move forward with a more honest and open relationship on future events.

For more, read Wade’s War here and see Jason Guard’s thoughts here.

The Environmental Film Festival is this weekend at the Byrd.

Style Weekly reports that the upcoming Richmond Environmental Film Festival organizer John Wade was convicted in 2002 of conspiring to blow up a crane at Short Pump Town Center with fellow members of the Earth Liberation Front, an organization labeled by the FBI as “one of the most ‘dangerous domestic terror groups’ in the United States”:

When Wade started organizing the event, he knew he needed a big-name speaker for added oomph. But Robert Kennedy Jr. wanted $30,000 and Al Gore costs $150,000 — plus there’s a two-year waiting list for the Nobel laureate. After hearing a Baltimore speech months ago by longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Wade waited in a book-signing line and simply asked for Nader’s help.

He agreed.

“Do you think I should have told Nader?” Wade poses to a Style reporter.

He probably should have told Style, who has pulled their sponsorship of the event.

People love this blogging thing. So much that the print folks wanna give it some credit.

Style Weekly published some thoughts through this week’s “Short Order”:

It’s difficult enough to open a small business in Richmond. And it’s more difficult still to fight the now-inevitable bloggery that follows, with every self-styled critic weighing in on matters big and mundane.

Those critics can not only squelch a squeamish customer base, but also make it more challenging for owners. Two new businesses made their much-delayed debuts last week and bloggers were breathless within hours. Should owners respond or ignore the online commentary?

Well, as the804.com rebuts:

[T]here seems to be a slight twinge of elitism in using the term “with every self-styled critic“, as if the opinions of bloggers are somehow less legitimate than, say, a Style-styled critic. As for this angle of being the friend of the “small businessman,” in the past, Style has had no problem ripping into restaurants and, thereby, their bottom lines with negative reviews (Baccus and Down Under recently come to mind). That feels like a double standard.

Well said.

The Times-Dispatch, meanwhile, has a couple of questions for bloggers. Which bloggers? Well, while they identify the sites, they don’t actually come out and say who exactly they’re speaking to. Is this a veiled critique on the art of blogging or just shoddy writing?

Anyways, first they wanna talk West Of Boulevard News and then they turn to Fan District Hub. Both are worthwhile and let ya know what the brains behind each are thinking. Hopefully someone at RTD is taking notes and will be tweaking their “community blogs” section accordingly. Or closing it in lieu of the real deals.

UPDATE: The WTOBN.net interview was with Sam, the FDHub.net interview was with F.T. Rea. This is the kind of crack reporting and thorough follow-up you’ve come to expect from the “Best Political Blog In Richmond”. That’s right. Denial is awesome.

UPDATE 2: Deveron Timberlake responds with a clarification of her thoughts in the Style Weekly column.