Newest member of the TBD blog network in the Washington area is is none other than the Georgetown Dish. It’s the same hyperlocal site I’ve been mentioning for some months now because of the fame of the neighborhood and the lively writing—and, yes, a founder named Beth Solomon.
Georgetown is home to ex-Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (still a Post vice president at large if you go by a bio in his latest book, a collaboration with his son Quinn) and countless other well-known journalists. The Dish deal happened, in other words, right under the Post’s nose. What’s more, remember who TBD’s top guy is: Jim Brady, who formerly edited the Post’s online edition. Only, now he’s building up TBD, owned by the Allbritton interests, the same people who years ago owned the Washington Star. A few little ironies and a little Back to the Future in all of this, eh? Beth herself is the niece of the late Nina Hyde, once the Post’s fashion editor. The Dish runs short items where Quinn links back to his site devoted to learning disabilities, and I’d hope that wouldn’t change even if technically he’s abetting the competition.
Strategically, the deal means that the Dish and TBD can learn from each other and leverage each other’s resources. A Dish gossip columnist with a juicy media-related item in the Dish, for example, could end up with facts spread far and wide by the TBD network. What’s next in this deja vu world? Bringing back The old Ear column (not The Elephant in The Solomon Scandals but a source of inspiration). Right now the Dish’s Alexa rank in the U.S. is 343,136, with just six incoming links listed by the Web traffic service (huh, no Scandals link shown there?). But the numbers could improve with the new alliance.
For more details, see a just-posted Scandals comment by Steve Buttry, TBD’s community engagement director, as well as the coverage from the Dish and the TBD blog. I’m be curious what this means in terms of the Dish’s own possible network plans. Could they still happen at least outside the D.C. area? Or does Allbritton alliance mean they’re dead?
This week’s promised items in the Scandals blog: They’re still on, just not today. Breaking news first. Tag and Google fans, you can win a free trade paperback of The Solomon Scandals by revealing the source of the related photos in my preview of coming attractions.
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