By Derek Hawkins

There’s a rumor around the city that there’s going to be a City Council election this fall. Just a rumor, though. Only the bloggers are talking about it. If you’ve been reading the Globe or The Herald, you probably wouldn’t have heard.

The official website of the city government seemed to pick up on the election rumor, too. But that wasn’t very trustworthy. The site only listed a bunch of dates, but no candidates.

OK, enough fooling around. The reality is we’re about six weeks away from a full election of the City Council and no one, besides a handful of local bloggers and activists, seems to care-not even the city’s major newspapers.

The election is Tuesday, Nov. 6, and all of the seats on the City Council-nine district seats and four at large seats-are up for grabs. But you wouldn’t know unless you’ve been doing a good amount of research. Information on this year’s City Council election is sparse and difficult to track down. And with the exception of a few improvements made in the past week, it still is.

Part of the reason is that, until last week, the city government’s website only listed when the elections were taking place. It wasn’t until last Wednesday, the day after three preliminary elections, that a list of candidates showed up.

Boston’s newspapers have also failed to report more than the bare minimum about the election. And it’s not for a lack of news.

For example, there is District 9, which encompasses the Allston-Brighton area. Five candidates ran in a preliminary election last week to compete for two spots on the November ballot. Among the hot-button issues the candidates debated were Harvard’s expansion into the neighborhood and a looming lack of affordable housing. Mike Pahre, who writes for the community blog Brighton Centered, said this election “may be the most thoroughly documented race in the city’s history.”

But when the preliminary votes came in and the openly gay frontrunner was upset by a social conservative, the city’s mainstream media had little to say. The Globe ran a paragraph the next day on the results. The Herald ran a sentence. Both were buried in news briefs.

The same happened in Northeastern’s own District 7 preliminary, when the rabble-rousing incumbent Chuck Turner crushed his two opponents with more than three-quarters of the vote. Again, the Globe ran a paragraph with the results- but it didn’t appear in the paper until three days after the election.

Where mainstream media have slacked, however, local blogs have come through.

Several blogs, including Brighton Centered, Allston Brighton Community Blog and Universal Hub, have led the way in covering the election, posting daily about the candidates and the issues residents want them to address. They were also the first and for a while the only media outlets to publish comprehensive lists of the candidates.

But even the bloggers acknowledge that, despite their work, information on the election is hard to come by.

“It’s a shame the ‘mainstream media’ doesn’t spend more ink on local politics,” said Harry Mattison, who reports for Allston Brighton Community Blog. “It is part of the vicious cycle that contributes to a less informed public, lower voter turnout, [and] reduced civic involvement.”

Civic involvement – that’s a concept students in particular should take heed of this fall. In light of the recent police and community crackdown for off campus student residents- which culminated with the arrests of 10 Northeastern students in one night – there is not a more appropriate time for students to become involved. But it isn’t easy when the task of voting in a local election – the sacred cow of “civic involvement” – requires as much research as a college essay.

Despite its lack of publicity, students, especially those who live off-campus, have a reason to care about the outcome of this election. Whether it’s deserved or not, their reputation among the city’s permanent residents is by and large a bad one. But an informed vote could prove a step toward rectifying that reputation. Don’t let this election remain a rumor.

– Derek Hawkins can be reached at [email protected]