The Oregonian has a profile on Christopher Frankonis, much better known as b!X - who's Portland Communique is the ne plus ultra of amateur journalism. I've known b!X through quite a few years of correspondence under many guises, President b!X of GeekForce.org, the One True b!X, the rootless cosmopolitan and others.

His Portland communique has overtaken all of his other efforts for the past couple years as he has been a one man local news source, attending everything from council meetings to protest marches and reporting on everything. Generally in amazing detail with a sense of humor and also outrage at politics as usual.

In fact, what some fans love about b!X (who, when he could afford cable, watched C-Span and the NASA channel incessantly) is his painstakingly thorough coverage of meetings and hearings that would hardly warrant two paragraphs in most newspapers -- what City Commissioner Erik Sten, a faithful "Portland Communique" reader ("Everybody at City Hall reads b!X"), calls the "tidbits of news you don't get other places."

Indeed, b!X speaks of his site, which recently recorded its 50,000th visitor, "not as a replacement but as an adjunct to the coverage that's available."

This kind of localized reporting of minutia is the sort of thing that newspapers (remember them?) used to do before they became nationwide ad distribution mechanisms but while it has tremendous value, it is a value that is very hard to "monetize" (to use a much reviled, dotbomb-era phrase).

What amazes many who visit the site is the fact that b!X has no job. Initially, "Portland Communique" began as exercise for b!X to get to know Portland better. He had lived here longer than he had lived anywhere since his childhood in upstate New York, and b!X, long active online (his name is a truncation of his Internet handle, "baby-X"), imagined that writing a weblog about city happenings would be the best way to force himself to learn about his new home.

An informed and engaged citizenry is something b!X feels passionate about. He has posted a sign that says "Vote or Die" in his apartment window, which faces traffic-heavy Southeast Division Street.

As he started to get out more, haunting City Hall or dropping in on Portland Business Alliance breakfast forums, he kept expecting someone to say, "What are you doing here? You can't be here." But no one did. Soon, b!X, who had never considered being a reporter, began devoting all his time to reporting and writing for "Portland Communique."

For the past few months, b!X has lived off money his parents saved for his college tuition. He spent one year at Purchase College of the State University of New York before dropping out. Writing "Portland Communique," he says, has been a far more useful education.

But that money will soon dry up. This month, b!X is hosting a pledge drive on "Portland Communique," asking readers for donations to keep the site running. (Leonard cops to giving $50 -- anonymously -- "I don't want him to lighten up on me.") Still, b!X has had his phone and Internet service cut off in the past, causing a temporary blackout of the site.

Jayson Blair can get a novel deal for his abuse of journalism that brought the New York Times to it's knees. It's a sad damned thing that b!X can't manage to pay the bills in doing what journalists are supposed to be doing. Then again, his story would make a pretty good novel.

The quote on b!X's cafepress shop (where he is selling not just t-shirts, but printed copies of everything he's published on the communique and out of print public-domain documents from Portland's past, sums thing up:

"The Portland Communique represents a remarkable experiment in local civic journalism. For one year, Christopher Frankonis (a.k.a. The One True b!X), closely followed and commented on Portland's local political scene. This was no half-hearted effort. In that short year, he became an expected presence at civic events, a public character, a known truth seeker. In considerable numbers, citizens and policy makers turned to his blog to track local issues. The Portland Communique built an important and alternative niche for information about local issues at the very moment when these issues were being ignored by entertainment focused local television news, and when print media was engaging more in source journalism than investigative journalism. For urban scholars, the Portland Communique should be recognized as a groundbreaking effort to reconnect citizens to local issues."

- Charles Heying, Professor of Urban Studies, Portland State University