First, we'll start with one response we saw to this plea from Seattlepi.com's 'community editor' for people in the next neighborhood on the Hearst target list to join their corporate 'hood blog effort:
Why blog for someone else when you can run your own blog? In other words - I wish the Hearst P-I luck in finding quality writers to blog for free.
It's a fair question. Here's the mail the writer was responding to:
My name is Vanessa Ho and I'm the community editor for seattlepi.com. I'm working on launching a neighborhood news blogs in Belltown, and XXX suggested you as someone who's interested in community issues.
I'm wondering if you - or anyone you know - might be interested in being part of a new team of volunteers writers to blog on community events, land-use issues, public safety, qualify of life, new businesses, and other news in Belltown. The goal of the blog is to foster community engagement and connections, and to be a place where people can learn about the neighborhood.
I'm asking each blogger to write at least one post a week (Two would be very welcomed, and short posts are okay). If you're interested, I'd be looking more for news about the neighborhood rather than opinion, although some opinion is okay. (Too much opinion can make the blog too agenda-heavy, or navel-gazing).
If you've come to the point where you're wondering, "What's in it for me?" here's the answer: You would reach a wide audience in getting your news out, and in developing a vibrant dialogue about Belltown. We have 4 million readers and more than 30 million page views every month. So the potential for neighborood discussion and empowerment is pretty strong.
So, any interest? I'll probably call you soon to bug you, but thought I'd send an email first. If you have any questions, feel free to call me at 206-448-8003.
Here's a post I wrote a few months ago on our whole neighborhood news blog effort:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/172302.asp
And here's a neighborhood, our first, that we launched in July (it'll give you a sense of the blog template and direction):
http://blog.seattlepi.com/inqueenanne/
I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for reading,
Vanessa
VANESSA HO
www.seattlepi.com
206-448-8003
community editor
Hearst is already muscling in on Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood which has an active, dedicated, independent neighborhood site at QueenAnneView.com already in place. We're happy to be providing the Neighborlogs service to an indie in their new target zone -- keep growing BelltownPeople!
Neighborlogs is built on the idea that these neighborhood news sites must be a true part of the community, and that business ownership is crucial. And we think that's being proven out as the big media organizations continue to stumble in their hyperlocal efforts. If big media wants to get involved in community news, they should help a site like BelltownPeople grow and put their massive sales resources to work helping to sell ads that support truly local news.
