Comments on: News Innovators on the Frontline: WestSeattleBlog

By: The Models: Hyperlocal Revenues | News Innovation

The Models: Hyperlocal Revenues | News Innovation — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:22:35 +0000

[...] that total staffing costs will also increase. Consider that hyperlocal blogs like Baristanet and West Seattle Blog are coming close to those figures without optimization and efficiencies we believe ad networks and [...]

By: News Innovators on the Frontline: Pegasus News | News Innovation

News Innovators on the Frontline: Pegasus News | News Innovation — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:14:02 +0000

[...] are not covering any one neighborhood at near the level of specificity that say a West Seattle Blog is. Though, there are some niches in those areas that we probably cover in that [...]

By: Dave Chase

Dave Chase — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:24:44 +0000

Congrats to the West Seattle Blog for their successes! It’s great to read these sorts of positive profiles amidst the drumbeat of doom and gloom.

I own/run a hyperlocal site and my consulting firm also has worked with one of the leading self-serve technology companies. While I can’t share any specifics about that consulting work, I have a couple main takeaways…
1. Like many things in technology, self-serve ads in the local space is overestimated in the short-term and underestimated in the long-term. I’ve dealt with tons of small biz and most are still several steps away from being comfortable with online ads let alone self serve.
2. The “bridge” I see being viable for “self serve” is what I call the “publisher assist model” where the self serve tools are used by the publisher to enable ads more cheaply so they can serve small advertisers. That will work.

Dave Chase
SunValleyOnline.com Publisher

By: cornelius

cornelius — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:41:16 +0000

That’s very interesting, thanks for sharing your story guys. I run a community newspaper which covers North and Northeast Portland Ore. We have a fairly robust web service for a community monthly. It’s like running two news operations though. I’ve seen a lot of small news models in both web and print here in Portland. I find often these operations are family run; that is a married couple divide up the work. It’s often true of small business in general that a business requires more than one person to operate but the profits are too small to support two people- unless those people are sharing their own personal expenses. Good luck and congrats!

By: Justin Carder, Neighborlogs

Justin Carder, Neighborlogs — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:37:00 +0000

West Seattle Blog’s business continues to be fascinating from all angles. Thanks for doing the interview, Tracy.

So, about this self-serve advertising thing, don’t paint the argument as self serve = no service, no communication, just clicking and credit cards, etc. We added self-serve features to the advertising system on our http://neighborlogs.com service to enable one-person operations to get and stay in the game. If only we could ship a Patrick with every site! But we’ll be the first (or the second) to tell everybody that self-serve doesn’t mean you just sit back, cover great news and collect checks. The relationship you are fostering at WSB also has to be created and maintained. Putting good tools in place can help that.

BTW, I also know that your approach to service isn’t technology free and that you guys are on the cutting edge of communication tools and more so I won’t paint ‘full service’ as being anti-tech

By: Lessons from SeattleCourant.com | News Innovation

Lessons from SeattleCourant.com | News Innovation — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:30:55 +0000

[...] tried to highlight some successful local news sites out there in recent weeks (and we’ll do more, so please take our survey!), [...]

By: Some old-school ideas for renewing journalism « Ink-Drained Kvetch

Some old-school ideas for renewing journalism « Ink-Drained Kvetch — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:42:27 +0000

[...] Web site, the married couple that runs the West Seattle Blog offers a good example of what can be done in the genre, if you will. They support themselves and their teenagers on advertising revenue, but [...]

By: Local news takes hard-work and local peo… « Paul M. Watson

Local news takes hard-work and local peo… « Paul M. Watson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:18:03 +0000

[...] 2:17 pm on July 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply Tags: media (48), web (518) Local news takes hard-work and local people. Not platforms, not remote media moguls and not geeks with turn-key tech (that would be me.) § [...]

By: Hyperlocal blog found to be financially viable! « Hyperlocal World

Hyperlocal blog found to be financially viable! « Hyperlocal World — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:56:00 +0000

[...] Here’s link to the original article from CUNY. [...]

By: Tracy @ WSB

Tracy @ WSB — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:23:47 +0000

Wow, fast turnaround, we just spoke yesterday. Anyway, just two points of clarification – One, while we founded our site in December 2005, it was a year later before it truly became a news site – starting with a huge power outage crisis here in West Seattle in December 2006 – and our 24/7 coverage commitment evolved in the months after that. Two, regarding the travel industry – I don’t believe the entire industry was “stupid.” My comment while chatting with Matthew was in the context that, while we do not believe self-service is the optimal solution for many SMB advertisers right now, we don’t have our heads in the sand — we know it will change and evolve, as will the needs of those SMB advertisers. (But for the value of personal service – even the travel-agent industry has not been completely replaced by self-serve booking – though I’ve been booking simple travel myself since the days before the consumer Web, some trips require expert help, which we used before we stopped taking vacations a couple years ago to focus on our business …)

@JohnWest – Journalism is hard work. Now that we are making money doing it, you bet we are going to pay the people we ask to help. Among the talented folks who have handled assignments for us lately is a veteran reporter, and West Seattle resident, who lost her job when the Post-Intelligencer bagged its print edition. I wish I could offer her fulltime work but we’re not quite there yet.