Baristanet, the queen of hyperlocal blogs, is five years old today.

I remember well the NJ.com Meetup we held back then to try to encourage locals to blog on our site. I learned an important lesson there. Debbie Galant, the original Barista, said starting a town blog was a good idea but she sure as hell wasn’t going to do it for my site. She wanted to own and build her own site and value and brand.

And she did. Bariastanet is a phenomenon. It has not just survived but succeeded. It is profitable. It is expanding, adding another blog to its stable recently. It has developed a strong reputation inside Montclair and outside. Congratulations to Deb and Liz and company for that. They have inspired others to start hyperlocal blogs not only across the country but in their own backyard, as The New York Times creates The Local and AOL president Tim Armstrong funds Patch in the nabe. Five years ago, they knew they were onto something and they’re being proved right.

I think the next frontier will be creating networks across blogs of geography and interest so they can reach critical mass to sell to larger advertisers and to share content and effort and perhaps cost. I believe blogs such as this will be a – not the but a – building block in the new ecosystem of news that will begin to replace in fits and starts failing newspapers. (In that ecosystem, I think there will also be newfangled news organizations that help organize the news in this diverse network.) I also hope that we’ll find many new ways for the Baristanets of the world to serve local businesses and make more money so they can sustain their work.

Great work, Baristas.

If “the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of endpoints,” then one task as digital journalists is to scale our networks — be they organically-grown, hyperlocal blogs or corporate-driven, international communities — as quickly and effectively as possible.

In a broadly-ranging, nearly consensus-free conversation, the “Networks” break-our group explored one case study, factors necessary to support network growth, and inherent challenges.
Tom Evslin provided two key points for our discussion of Debby Galant’s Baristanet, a blog covering news specific to Montclaire, NJ.

• The best Editorial networks grow organically from the bottom up.  Individual entities tend towards expertise and passion, but lack platform or ad sale expertise.
• The best Tool networks tend to form top down with standardized platform tools and metrics, plus centralized ad ops.

It stands to reason, then, that a top down initiative like Microsoft’s Sidewalk — possessing platform, metrics, and ad ops standardization lacking editorial expertise, flexibility and voice (see “The Cracks In Microsoft’s Sidewalk“) – might fail.

Likewise, though Debby’s Baristanet is a local success, her network value is less than it could be.  Moreover, she is forced to spend resources on platform and ad ops, instead of pure content creation.
Baristanet, then, would benefit from a broader, hyper-local site-supporting platform.

Outside.in’s Mark Josephson and NowPublic’s Merrill Brown contributed valuable insight from a platform perspective on incentivizing network engagement:

• Egos: We’ll make you a star!
• Revenue: My ads on your page.
• Reward/Reputation

In the waning minutes of our conversation, Harvard’s Thomas Eisenmann connected the conversation to a key question as news organizations continue to decline: If a city’s primary paper disappeared, would hyper-local coverage replace the centralized, enterprise-journalism oriented newsroom?
In the end, Thomas’s question lingered alongside a number of others:

• What are the best examples of journalism networks?
• Are journalism networks fundamentally niche?
• Can niche networks serve investigative journalism?
• How does a historically corporate, top-down infrastructure grow a network?

Dan Pacheco, Northwest Voice, John Wilpers, Boston Now; Jarah Euston, Fresno Famous; Dan Barkin, Raleigh News and Observer

Moderator: David Cohn

The panelists talked of their development of user-generated content on the local level, involving those who Barkin called “people formerly known as the audience.”

Pacheco outlined his creation of nine different social networking and user-generated print products, including Northwest Voice. Wilpers spoke of BostonNow, which reverse publishes, putting bloggers into the paper. Euston talked of starting up Modestofamous and Fresno Famous, local entertainment portals which were eventually sold to McClatchy. And Barkin talked of the Observer’s efforts to give readers a voice in the paper by placing their stories and photos posted online on a previously moribund Page 2 in the metro section and getting them to share their experiences for an expose on state traffic courts.

“The newspapers have a tremendous asset to be able to reverse publish,” said Barkin. “If they don’t utilize that asset, they’re really missing a bet. Most still don’t. A very small fraction of newspapers are doing any reverse publishing. They’re not using that significant magnet of printing content to bring people onto their website.”

Of particular note was the Observer’s community site, share.triangle.com, with content from the site feeding a page in the paper. It is also using the community to help with reporting.

“One of the things we did in the middle of our reporting, we invited the public in with a fairly big display on our city and state front,” said Barkin. “We need your help with x, y, and z. Tell us about your experiences in court. Tell us what happens on the highway. Wegot a tremendous response, incorporated the response in a prominent part of the report.”

All of the panelists, especially Wilpers of Boston Now, said they use the user-generated web content to produce print publications, which in turn drive the production of more web content. Wilpers said as many as two-thirds of his bloggers make it in to the paper.

“All of you print, great irony,” said Jarvis.
Debbie Gallant, of baristanet, said she was not interested in a print component.

“Going to paper and having validation in print is something we’re not seeing,” she said. “We’ve exceeded the local newspaper in tems of circulation. We’ve become the game in town. The reporters from The Star-Ledger get real excited when we link to their stuff on baristanet. The digital game can become the game.”

Jarvis asked Jim Willse, managing editor of the Ledger, what his relationship should be with baristanet. “I haven’t got the foggiest idea,” he said, before suggesting there might be some synergy on the revenue side of the ball and with content such as high school sports.

Jarvis suggested a meeting between the two during hallway time later in the afternoon.

By May of 2004, Baristanet launched its beta. Today Galant and co-founder/partner Liz George employ four people working part-time as reporters, graphic artists and technology experts for Baristanet, which is one of the leading placeblogs in the country. The site has gone from 200 to more than 7,000 visits a day and has been recognized as the inspiration for hyperlocal blogs across the country. “For people who live here this is something they become addicted to,” says Galant.

Main Goal of Baristanet: To provide a new model for local news and discussion that is fast, fun and can support itself through online advertising. “Sometimes we refer to it as ‘your local weekly newspaper meets the Daily Show.’” Baristanet is a hybrid of media news and entertainment. The goal is to provide fun coverage of local issues that are important and includes the community that has gathered around the site while creating a sustainable business model at the same time.

An example of hyperlocal coverage: Last summer there was a microburst (like a tornado) in Montclair which devastated 100-year-old trees and “we covered it like crazy…. coverage that we are very proud of” says Galant.

Notable Achievements: Since launching, Baristanet has become a major competitor in the local market, with a bigger circulation in unique visitors online than the Montclair Times, according to Galant. It was named the #1 placeblog in American by Placeblogger.com last January. It has been referenced more than once in The New York Times, which culls its page for story ideas, says Galant.

During a fire induced blackout last summer Baristanet’s traffic increased 50 percent (despite the lack of electricity in many areas). During the emergency situation the site became a powerful resource for the community. In 100 degree weather Baristanet has provided info to the city that even the town website and police weren’t giving says Galant. Whether it’s a manhole explosion, murder or blackout, people come to Baristanet to see if they are covering it, “and if it isn’t covered already, readers send in tip to make sure it is.”

Aside from traditional reporting, the size and local focus has given Baristanet opportunities to experiment in online journalism. From using a Google mash-up to chronicle local development, to using a national polling company to perform hyperlocal polls in each of the three towns it covers (providing a uniquely statistical view of community feelings about specific town issues), Baristanet has set the tone for what hyperlocal news blogs can do.

A Surprising Realization: Even though you may own a publication or an online site, once you open it up to comments it really is an interactive space, says Galant. “Its personality develops on its own. You can set a tone, but it has become something bigger and different.” Strong personalities emerge and have shaped Baristanet into something that Galant never could have envisioned. “The community inhabits it in a way that is strange, sometimes beautiful and sometimes disturbing,” says Galant.

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: On a practical level: If Galant could have done it again, she wouldn’t have set up Baristanet to blog on weekends. Unsure when people would read the site during the initial launch, Baristanet had fresh content all week long. She didn’t find out until months later that people tend to read the site Monday through Friday. “But now our readers are spoiled, so we keep up the weekends.”

In her guest post at PressThink Galant also wrote about the lessons learned while working in an immediate medium.

“There’s also the real-time aspect of what can be accomplished by instant publishing. Like telling readers about kids selling lemonade to raise money for Katrina right now, or reporting a high school bomb scare minutes after it happened-– or even just providing an up-to-date community resource for closings and cancellations in the case of snow.”

Money: Baristanet and its four part-time employees are supported by advertising and has been operating in the black for the last two years. Baristanet also pays people to write and do graphics for the ads. Glanat says they often receive five local business advertising inquiries a week and has around 30-40 regular advertisers right now including Realtors, Montclair State University, a local hospital, retailers, services, restaurants and other city institutions.

Future Goals: Conversations with two separate people/organizations are on the table about expanding Baristanet into new cities. Nothing has been decided, but it is something Galant is looking into. Baristanet is also interested in forging alliances with other placeblogs to form ad networks and to share certain content.

What Are you Hoping to Get from other People at the News Innovation Conference?

“We are open for strategic partnerships in terms of expansion. We have an expertise and ability to make the model work and we are looking for capital to make it expand and looking for the right partners.”

—–

Extra Reading: Galant’s guest post on PressThink (Good personal history)

Liz George’s guest post on PressThink (Her review of Backfence)