I can’t tell you how many people I talk to in East Ridge who tell me when I introduce myself that they are very familiar with East Ridge News Online.

They say, “oh yeah, I see your stuff on all the Facebook pages you’ve got.”

I explain that East Ridge News Online (ERNO) is a stand-alone Website. It’s an online newspaper where I attempt to document the daily happenings in East Ridge. Much of the time a blank look comes over their faces. Many say that they thought ERNO was just posts on Facebook pages like East Ridge Neighborhood Watch, East Ridge Friends and Neighbors, East Ridge Concerned Citizens and East Ridge TN and Surrounding Area.

You may or may not have noticed this week that ERNO stories have not been posted to these Facebook pages. That was a conscious decision. I will no longer post news stories on Facebook. If you want to inform yourselves about the daily happenings in East Ridge – law enforcement, city council, various government boards and committees, an occasional sports story, business openings _ you can access it through eastridgenewsonline.com.

There are a couple reasons for this move. The biggest, however, is the daily rancor created on Facebook. Many people post comments that are nothing but bile. They write things they would never say face-to-face to another human being. I don’t want to be a part of that and I don’t want East Ridge News Online to be associated, however tenuously, with that kind of counterproductive civic discourse.

I will continue to share stories on the East Ridge News Online Facebook page. More than 2,000 of my neighbors “like” the page and I think it will create little if any confusion about what East Ridge News Online is … an online newspaper.

I would like to remind readers of East Ridge News Online that if you feel the overwhelming desire to comment on a story in ERNO, at the end of each story is a feature called “Disqus.” You can express your opinion about the news of the day.