Pittsburgh City Paper has taken note of this weekend’s Rust Belt Bloggers Summit in Erie — and is pointing to this Web site as an example of the type of discussions that are taking place on locally themed blogs in the Rust Belt region.

Here’s the opening to the piece, which is online today:

Looking quickly at the blog’s message board, it’d be hard to believe they were talking about any place but Pittsburgh.

“There is more inbreeding and incest in all these governmental agencies and authorities than in most royal families,” one reader posted on June 28.

“If there is one thing we do better [here] than anybody else, it’s shady backroom dealing,” another wrote on July 2.

The blog in question is Outside Erie (www.globalerie.com/blog/), maintained by Erie expatriate Peter Panepento, but the discussion could just as easily come from any number of other Rust Belt cities’ blogs with equally striking similarities.

This weekend, many of the writers who blog about similar issues in neighboring cities such as Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Buffalo will be coming to Erie for the first-ever Rust Belt Bloggers Summit.

The opening gathering is Friday night at the Brewerie. Erie natives such as Jim Russell and Douglas Derda (both of whom are writing from their new homes) are expected to be there.

So, too, are GlobalErie writers Ian Enterline and Dale Hannah are also expected be a part of the weekend’s events. Ian and Dale will be writing about what they learn throughout the weekend.

Unfortunately, I can’t get the time to be there myself. But I’m looking forward to finding out about some of the key issues that are identified by the folks who come in for the event — and to seeing if we can find some shared items that deserve attention throughout the larger region.

Should be interesting.