As an aspiring producer of a flashy, widget-packed online neighborhood blog (belltowndispatch.com), and also the publisher of an obsolete dinosaur of a tree-killing neighborhood monthly newspaper (The Belltown Messenger), I was excited to hear what moderator Monica Guzman of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer would be able to coax out of bloggers extraordinaire Cory Bergman (myballard.com), Scott Schaefer (b-townblog.com), Amber Campbell (rainiervalleypost.com), Heather McLeland-Wieser (Seattle Public Library) and Tracy Record (westseattleblog.com). They were there to talk about the challenges daily papers are going to face in playing catch-up with neighborhood blogs, as far as depth of coverage and interactivity go.
I expected the bloggers to be wanna-be writer types, and was surprised to find a panel stocked with serious businesspeople boasting backgrounds in marketing and corporate journalism.
The event was taped by TVW and should be required viewing for anyone wanting to start up their own autonomous mom-and-pop neighborhood news outlet, but be warned: these neighbloggers unanimously agree that there is a major time commitment required in getting a decent site up and running. Like any small business start-up, you will put in countless unpaid hours of labor and love before you ever make a dime.
The ad revenue for your neighblog isn't just going to come floating in, either. The West Seattle blog, the most successful of the Seattle bunch, began publishing in 2005 and only recently began taking ads; Record says they now have 30 advertisers. Bergman of MyBallard says they'll soon begin offering "business announcements": a headline and mini-story advertorial about a business, clearly labeled as advertising.
The panelists all agreed that neighblogs, often one or two person operations, have blurred the traditional "ad wall" between editorial and advertising departments that has always existed in mainstream journalism.
The word "infopreneur" came up a lot, which I believe is a fancy attempt to synthesize what a blogger is: a gatherer and seller of online information. When the quality of your information reaches a certain level of consistency, advertisers will want to go along for the ride - with all the conflicts-of-interest and compromises that that entails. Former comedy writer Scott Schaefer of Burien, who, like Bergman, is expanding his neighblog empire into adjacent neighborhoods, has gone ahead and hired a husband-and-wife team to cover the ad side of things.
There was much talk of "community participation" and "helping the community." Former marketing person Amber Campbell of The Rainier Valley Post scolded the editor of her neighborhood weekly, "who doesn't live here, or have an office here." (Full disclosure: that would be Erik Hansen, who is paying me to write this article.) She then switched gears and talked about doing some Rainier Valley blogging "from the beach in Belize," where she lost her Internet connection right when the story about the Rainier Beach traffic circle murder broke. "It was just horrible," she said as she choked back tears.
As to the question of whether of not people actually visit neighborhood blogs, the savvy infopreneur says: some of the Seattle blogs have pretty decent traffic. West Seattle has an Alexa world ranking of 247,436 (by comparison, thestranger.com is ranked 15,019, the Seattle P-I is 1,100), with page views up six percent in three months. MyBallard.com is at 581,415, up 47 percent in three months.
Do any of the blogs make "real" money? After attending the City Club meeting I can confidently say that Record of the West Seattle blog takes in decent advertising dough. In fact, when first exploring ad sales, she got $3,000 in pledges from a PayPal donation button overnight.
"There's no better marketing opportunity for small business," she told the crowd of 70. Campbell of the Rainier Valley Post chimed in: "I know some of Tracy's advertisers, and they are doing crazy business because of their ads, and they should stop advertising anywhere else."
The potential is there for a couple like Cory and Kate Bergman to publish a neighborhood "online newspaper," pay some freelancers and make a decent living.
Nobody's going to get rich, though, and the establishment neighborhood weeklies, if not the dailies, are going to catch on eventually and start publishing their own blog material. Cory says there are "operational and cultural reasons why newspapers have not caught up with this trend."
Bergman has a high-powered day job as director of business development for msnbc.com, but he dutifully squeezes in near-daily blogtime.
In fact, during a recent hospital visit he looked out the window, saw smoke, and "liveblogged about the nearby fire" while his wife was in labor.
That's dedication. Committed neighborhood watchdogs like the Bergmans of myballard.com and Record of West Seattle Blog are setting the blogbar very high indeed.
You can reach South End resident Alex Mayer via the addresses below.
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