FARGO – Forum Communications Co.’s Areavoices sites are showing their power this week as the heartbreaking week in the Minot area unfolds.

Bloggers in that area are sharing their thoughts, insights and images directly to our website. And there’s more bloggers in that area signing up every day.

On Thursday, we reached 121,961 page views across all areavoices.com sites. Our flood blog had more than 17,000 hits.

“That many hits demonstrates the role that communities can play in the telling of large news events,” says community content manager Shane Mercer, who organizes bloggers for Areavoices. “The phrase that comes to mind is the blog just blew up.”

Indeed, blogs are more than one person’s rant or rave about obscure topics. In a sense, we’ve been opening the door for people near or at the scene of news events and post their own eyewitness accounts to a large audience.

We hope the bloggers who’ve recently signed up continue to share their words and images with us. Your words are being read, and your photographs are being seen.