Ghost of Midnight

Place Blog Data from New York Times

Bob Tedeschi wrote in the New York Times (Aug. 10, 2008) about local news blogs and included some interesting data…

Baristanet.com [Montclair, N.J., and surrounding towns]:

• Posts about five or six videos, articles or photos every weekday.
• Debuted in early 2004 and now attracts 18,000 readers on peak days… and more than 82,000 monthly readers, or roughly twice the population of Montclair, and about three times the number of readers it had early last year.
• The site has a full-time editor, Annette Batson, a full-time designer, and four part-time workers, [and] now consistently generates more than $10,000 in monthly profits.

Red Bank Green (www.redbankgreen.com) [Newark, NJ], started in 2006… attracts about 45,000 readers a month.

Hoboken411.com [Hoboken, NJ]… attracts more than 250,000 monthly visitors… readers click on “several million” pages monthly on his blog, founded in 2006, and have added more than 100,000 comments.

WestportNow.com [Westport, CT] started in 2003, has more than 40,000 monthly readers.

NewHavenIndependent.com [New Haven, CT], begun in 2005… has three full-time reporters and one part-time reporter, all paid for by $185,000 in grants, corporate sponsorships and private donations.

The Loop (GetInLoop.com) [Long Island, NY], a new hyperlocal site started last year… attracts more than 10,000 monthly visitors.

Launched in 2006, Front Porch Forum is a different model, but shares some things in common with these efforts. Our 10,000 subscribing households are local to our pilot area (greater Burlington, VT) and are about 20% of total households. These good folks supply nearly all of the writing (FPF employs no writers) and partake of our service every other day on average.