The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

TBD, meet NYC’s Westside Independent: Role model for SOME neighborhood blog affiliates?

You already know if you’ve been fol­low­ing the Solomon Scan­dals blog.

My name is David, I’m a newsa­holic, and I’m cheer­ing for the TBD news startup to thrive here in the Wash­ing­ton area.

But will top­ics like sports and food elbow aside civic mat­ters at times because of the per­sonal pas­sions of TBD’s affil­i­ate blog­gers? Here’s to balance!

So what’s a well-rounded neigh­bor­hood blog like? TBD, meet the West­side Inde­pen­dent in New York City. Good local and hyper­local blogs exist in the D.C. area, but the Inde­pen­dent is still a great poten­tial role model, with a stel­lar mix of grass­roots cov­er­age and pro­fes­sion­al­ism. So it seems at least, from some 250 miles away.

Click on the Inde­pen­dent link above. The orange nav­i­ga­tion strip at the top will speed you to cov­er­age of sub­jects rang­ing from “Food” to “Busi­ness,” “Devel­op­ment” and “Edu­ca­tion.” On the home page itself, you’ll see a gem: Proof that the New York Times is More Pop­u­lar than the Wall Street Journal—Among Thieves, with the low­down com­ing straight from the Star­bucks at 73rd Street and Colum­bus Avenue. Now that’s a full-service neigh­bor­hood blog. Hob­by­ist blogs, too, can be worth­while for both read­ers and cre­ators, as I’ll make clear later on. I’m just point­ing out the differences.

In the strictest sense, the Inde­pen­dent is a site rather than a blog; it even includes a sub­blog. Still, we’re not talk­ing big bucks for seri­ous site oper­a­tors with a touch of Web savvy. The Inde­pen­dent runs on the omnipresent and free Word­Press just like the Solomon Scan­dals blog, except that the own­ers have added a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Mag­a­zine theme ($95?) to jazz it up.

Not all TBD affil­i­ates can or should strive to be the Upper West­side Inde­pen­dent. But ide­ally TBD will encour­age inter­ested blog­gers to aim for the Independent’s mix of com­pre­hen­sive­ness, live­li­ness and pro­fes­sional pol­ish. Only 22 or so of the 82 blogs in the TBD net­work seem to be gen­eral neigh­bor­hood blogs or are civic-oriented in other ways, if you assume that TBC has men­tioned them all on its site. Per­haps the Inde­pen­dent can inspire TBD-network blog­gers, allow­ing, cer­tainly, for lim­its of time, resources and experience.

Granted, the Inde­pen­dent could be more inter­ac­tive and serve up mul­ti­me­dia, and in the inter­est of sus­tain­abil­ity, more adver­tis­ing wouldn’t hurt. Still, Edi­tor Avi Salz­man (“a native New Yorker liv­ing on the Upper West Side with my wife and our Labrador/Shiba Inu mix”) shows us the breadth of cov­er­age that even small neigh­bor­hood sites can strive for.

Within the TBD blog net­work (just part of the oper­a­tion from Allbrit­ton Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) I’d espe­cially like to see more one-city or one-neighborhood sites with a civic focus like TBD affil­i­ate Rockville Cen­tral’s. If enough bal­anced neigh­bor­hood blogs don’t hap­pen on their own, then per­haps TBD can use some extra finan­cial incen­tives, as well as expand the planned size of the approx­i­mately 50-person staff to fill in the gap.

Brad Rouke (left photo), a blog net­work and pub­lic affairs vet­eran who pub­lishes and founded Rockville Cen­tral, says his asso­ci­a­tion with TBD already will be worth it for him; and Cindy Cotte Grif­fiths, the edi­tor, is like­wise enthu­si­as­tic about the net­work. “TBD.com,” he writes, intends to pro­mote “indi­vid­ual arti­cles through­out their site, based on geocod­ing.” It is “explic­itly say­ing that blog­gers’ con­tent remains on their blogs. Some­one plunks in 20850 as their ZIP Code, and they’ll see a bunch of Rockville Cen­tral articles—and the links will come back to us. I antic­i­pate an upswing in traf­fic.” He prefers the shared ad model to pay-per post and notes there is “no cap to the upside.”

Brad and Cindy, I hope you’re right. Not all blog­gers will favor the busi­ness model you’re using for your Rockville blog, which is good for your pro­fes­sional vis­i­bil­ity in both your cases, just as this one is good for mine.

Speak­ing of the above, big thanks to TBD Com­mu­nity Engage­ment Direc­tor Steve But­try (photo) for run­ning a link to my thoughts on civic involve­ment, com­pen­sa­tion and other issues. This is the kind of open cul­ture TBD needs to suc­ceed. I can also appre­ci­ate the sen­ti­ment in an infor­mal TBD FAQ: “We hate when peo­ple wrin­kle their noses when they say ‘blog­ger.’ We’re embrac­ing the trend, both by aggre­gat­ing local blog posts and by work­ing together with blog­gers in work­shops, and on spe­cial events held on the web, TV, or live and in per­son.” Clap, clap! Lessons for the Wash­ing­ton Post? For now, its com­mu­nity out­reach to the local blo­gos­phere seems—at least from across the Potomac—to be rather piti­ful com­pared to TBD’s. In an ear­lier post, I said both oper­a­tions could do bet­ter, a feel­ing I still have, but at this point TBD appears to be widen­ing its lead.

Idea: TBD almost surely is or will be doing this, but if not, I would sug­gest that it offer design review and maybe even actual design ser­vices to neigh­bor­hood blog­gers. With nav­i­ga­tion and aes­thet­ics in mind—as well as opti­mal dis­play of advertising—TBD might even pro­vide starter tem­plates for Word­Press or other blog­ging sys­tems. The tem­plates could include topic cat­e­gories sim­i­lar to those of the Upper West­side Inde­pen­dent. No, I’m not say­ing that a small hyper­local site must look like the New York Times; too fancy a design might even scare off some com­mu­nity peo­ple. But a rea­son­able amount of pol­ish can go a long way. The more tech­ni­cal aid TBD can offer affil­i­ates indi­vid­u­ally or or through stan­dard pack­ages, the better—especially since many of the affil­i­ate blog­gers will be bet­ter at writ­ing and social net­work­ing than at WordPressing.

Speak­ing of help for net­work mem­bers, Com­mu­nity engage­ment staffer Lisa Rowan (aka Listalla, shown in the left photo) this week tweeted that TBD is work­ing on apps. Any of ‘em designed for the blog net­work folks to use? A Word­Press plug-in and other wrin­kles to sim­plify cross-postings, either edited or unedited, would be super. In the works already?

The civic-oriented blogs in the 82-member TBD net­work, as opposed to sim­ply “din­ing in…” or just “real estate in”: Rockville Cen­tral (“news and views”), ARL­Now (also N&V), And Now, Ana­cos­tia (“neigh­bor­hood pro­mo­tion, edu­ca­tion, and excite­ment about the beau­ti­ful and his­toric Ana­cos­tia neigh­bor­hood”), the George­town Met­ro­pol­i­tan, Life in the Vil­lage (“Fair­fax Vil­lage sec­tion of Hill­crest”), Frozen Trop­ics (“Trinidad sec­tion of H Street”), Annan­dale, VA, Bor­der­stan (“DC’s Dupont, Logan and U Street neigh­bor­hoods”), Old Domin­ion Watch­dog (“ded­i­cated to excel­lent inves­tiga­tive report­ing that pro­motes respon­si­ble state and local gov­ern­ment”) Mary­land Reporter (“the news site for Mary­land gov­ern­ment and pol­i­tics, with orig­i­nal  report­ing and a full roundup from other sites” and The Anti D.C. (“satire, offer­ing daily humor essays and vlogs that turn local pol­i­tics into pop cul­ture and pop cul­ture into whine”)

Other civic-oriented sites within the TBD  82 are the Bright­wood­ian (“news, explo­rations, and obser­va­tions”), Sil­ver Spring Sin­gu­lar (“ded­i­cated to the oft-maligned, geographically-ambiguous sub­urb known as Sil­ver Spring”), Greater Greater Wash­ing­ton (“trans­porta­tion, devel­op­ment, pub­lic spaces and more in DC, Mary­land, and Vir­ginia”), New Colum­bia Heights (“cov­er­ing every­thing” in that area), Gate­way to Loudoun County and Dulles South (“business-flavored, family-centric blog fea­tur­ing peo­ple, orga­ni­za­tions and events of inter­est in the Dulles region “), The Other 35 per­cent (“News and Notes on Life in D.C. With Occa­sional Ran­dom Mus­ings”), Pun­dit Mom (actu­ally more national than local), Beyond DC (not work­ing when I dropped by), U Street Girl (“cul­tural, artis­tic, epi­curean, social, or lifestyle-related”), We Love DC (“largest locally-owned DC news and lifestyle blog, cov­er­ing News, Sports, Food, Tran­sit, Pol­i­tics and Music for all of DC”) and Dis­trict Cur­mud­geon (“a pair of well-practiced com­plain­ers offer con­struc­tive crit­i­cism regard­ing all things DC. Based out of Ward 5’s Trinidad neighborhood”).

I’ve tried to be inclu­sive in defin­ing “civic-oriented.” Am I still leav­ing out any nat­u­rals? Very pos­si­bly. I didn’t list DC Metro­cen­tric (“new build­ings, con­struc­tion, archi­tec­ture, destruc­tion, plan­ning, real estate, gos­sip, devel­op­ment”) because it seemed more of a real estate blog). No spe­cial order of men­tions here, by the way. For those who are curi­ous, The DCist (“the most pop­u­lar local blog in Wash­ing­ton”), cor­po­rately owned, is not in the TBD net­work (I’m guess­ing that the DCist has com­pet­i­tive busi­ness rea­sons that don’t reflect on TBD).

Pros vs. “ama­teurs”: In a sense I actu­ally was in TBD’s place, as owner of an e-book blog draw­ing many con­tri­bu­tions from non­jour­nal­ists. And guess what? I found that the so-called ama­teurs’ work was bet­ter informed on the whole than cov­er­age that the main­stream press offered on the topic. After all, my tech pros and hob­by­ists actu­ally knew and used the tech­nol­ogy and wrote with far more pas­sion than most J school grads would have. Like­wise, as an exam­ple from The­Ge­orge­townDish (a nonTBD blog) shows, we can apply this same con­cept to geo­graph­i­cally based cov­er­age. Founder Beth Solomon free­lanced for ABC Radio, but far more impor­tantly, she lives in and cares about George­town. Let’s see lots and lots of “felt” posts in the TBB affil­i­ates’ blogs—especially about first-hand expe­ri­ences, good and bad—rather than just dry report­ing of gov­ern­ment news and store openings.

You might also like:

• TBD’s Washington area news startup: Niche blogs wooed—but no signs YET of a hyperlocal nirvana
• Smile! You’re on TBD TV—at least if you’re an affiliated blogger with Skype and the news gods beckon
• Solomon Scandals hyperlocal series so far: A list for latecomers
• How TBD Web news startup in the D.C. area will work with affiliate bloggers
• Washington Post vs. Allbritton’s TBD Web startup plans: BOTH sides could do better