CJR's Guide to Online News Startups

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BUSSUM, NETHERLANDS — Two Dutch guys met at a party in Amsterdam. A month later, they had a magazine. Jochem Wijnands, who... More >

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Jul 28, 2011 03:16 PM
Rust Wire

Reporting on urban and social issues in the Rust Belt
By Anthony Badami
CLEVELAND, OHIO — Rust Wire, a collaborative media project which bills itself as "a voice for change in the Industrial Midwest," was founded in 2009 by Angie Schmitt and Kate Giammarise in order to challenge the notion that some economically enfeebled towns in the Midwestern United States "weren't worth saving." The site, which features original reporting and photography, first-person essays, and opinion pieces, aims at highlighting the disregarded economic decline of many of American's most notable post-industrial cities: Pittsburgh, Cleveland,...
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Mar 25, 2011 02:46 PM
RVANews

Richmond's online-only news source
By Alex Fekula
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA — In 2007, Ross Catrow and Scott Pharr set out to create an online hub where Richmond residents could have access to the increasing number of blogs and hyperlocal sites based in and around the small city. The two had been college roommates who found web-related jobs after school: Catrow worked for the state of Virginia, Pharr for a gold and jewelery wholesaler. The two decided to go into business for themselves, establishing a web design company, PharrOut,...
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Jan 3, 2011 05:34 PM
Salon

The general interest online magazine has learned to get specific
By Sean Gandert
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Just because Salon is the oldest general interest publication on the Internet doesn't mean that it's been standing still. Founded in 1995 as a web journalism alternative, producing articles as intelligent and well-written as its peers in print, the website's path has been bumpy, but it is still recognizably the same outlet that first appeared over fifteen years ago. The difference today is that it's no longer competing to be the web's largest general interest publication....
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Dec 1, 2011 04:52 PM
SanFranPreps.com

Exhaustive high school sports reporting for San Francisco
By Erik Shilling
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Like more than a few newspapermen before him, Jeremy Balan was less than impressed with the play many of the stories from his beat--high school sports--were getting in the newspaper. When Balan moved to San Francisco in 2009, he was even more disappointed, but this time with everyone else. After years of cutbacks, the San Francisco Chronicle had reduced its high school sports coverage to the barest of bones, and competing media were doing little to...
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Jun 3, 2011 11:38 AM
Seattle PostGlobe (Defunct)

Seattle-centric reporting and aggregation, and a place for former Post-Intelligencer staffers to practice their craft
By Alex Fekula
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — [Editor's Note: The Seattle PostGlobe announced that it would cease publication on July 29, 2011. Sally Deneen, the site's co-founder and news curator (and the journalist interviewed for the profile below), wrote about the decision here. This profile was originally published on June 3, 2011.] When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer laid off nearly all its staff and went online-only in March of 2009, metro reporter Kery Murakami found himself suddenly out of a job. Saddled with an uncertain...
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Jan 25, 2012 12:56 AM
Sheepshead Bites

Hyperlocal stories by the seaside in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
By Caitlin Kasunich
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Nearly four years ago, the late renowned Brooklyn blogger Robert Guskind pointed out in his coverage of the 2008 Brooklyn Blogfest the pressing need for hyperlocal news sites in the borough's least-covered communities. "While some neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens and Park Slope are written about at length, others, such as Sunset Park and Sheepshead Bay - where there are compelling community issues - are seriously 'under blogged,'" he wrote. Read more about Sheepshead Bites Ned Berke,...
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Mar 29, 2012 02:02 PM
Silicon Bayou News

News for (and by) the New Orleans tech scene
By Evan Simko-Bednarski
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — In March 2011, Zachary Kupperman, a New Orleans attorney with an interest in tech startups, attended New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, an annual convention of business leaders and entrepreneurs. For Kupperman, co-founder of websites such as PolicyPitch.com, a site where users can submit public policy ideas and track state and local legislation, the convention was an acknowledgment of the strength of the Crescent City's business scene, and a demonstration that those involved had a great deal to...
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Nov 28, 2011 11:08 AM
Silicon Prairie News

A home on the range for Midwest tech coverage
By Maura R. O'Connor
OMAHA, NEBRASKA — In the summer of 2008, Jeff Slobotski was working for the sales team of a technology company in New York City but living in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. During his travels around the country for work, he kept getting asked, "What's going on in Omaha?" Slobotski knew that, contrary to popular belief, there was a lot going on in Omaha, including a small but burgeoning community of entrepreneurs and creative types launching new business ventures. So...
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Jan 3, 2011 06:03 PM
Slant

Omnivorous pop culture criticism
By Sean Gandert
WEEHAWKEN, NEW JERSEY — Founded in 2001 as an outlet for its editors' frustrations with their day jobs, Slant Magazine began humbly as a two-man online reviewing operation, with Ed Gonzalez writing about film and Sal Cinquemani writing about music. The two covered only a smattering of the biggest releases in each field, but as other writers began volunteering to work for the site, its ambitions increased. Slant now boasts a healthy volume of content from a small army of...
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Recently Updated: Dec 31, 2010 12:24 AM
Slate

The Internet's old guard general interest publication has never slowed down
By Sean Gandert
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — "Slate's overall mission is to create really intelligent, witty, durable web journalism; [that mission] has been more or less the same since 1996," says David Plotz, the site's editor. Slate is perhaps best known as one of the first publications to prove that a high-quality editorial product could exist and thrive online, but it didn't earn that reputation just by mimicking print standards--the site has excelled at leveraging its native medium. No publication bats 1.000,...
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Dec 31, 2010 12:51 AM
Small Wars Journal

An information hub and blogging network for some of the biggest names in military thought
By Michael Meyer
WASHINGTON, DISTRICT of COLUMBIA — Although it's right to call Small Wars Journal a niche publication, doing so misrepresents the site's true influence. "Small wars," as the site uses it, is a kind of catch-all term for counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, and other pervasive features of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although SWJ may have the narrow readership of a trade or academic journal, its online presence has allowed it to be a major voice on topics paramount to public...
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Apr 20, 2011 02:57 PM
Solutions

Colorado's source for health policy reporting and discussion
By Dohini Patel
DENVER, COLORADO — Solutions, launched on December 1st, 2010, is an independent, nonprofit news platform on health policy issues in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West. Solutions draws its inspiration from the format and niche content of another local news site, Education News Colorado. According to Solutions editor Diane Carman, the site "avoids the political back and forth that traditional media covers endlessly. Solutions considers its mission to give more nuanced information about healthcare issues that goes beyond reporting what...
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Oct 26, 2011 03:33 PM
SomervilleToday.com

Hyperlocal news for a small town in New Jersey
By Caitlin Kasunich
SOMERVILLE, NEW JERSEY — When he relocated to New Jersey in 1987, publisher and editor Loren Fisher already had an extensive journalistic résumé. Starting in 1978, he worked at a myriad of newspapers around the country, including the Star-Press and Shelbyville News in Muncie and Shelbyville, Indiana, respectively, as well as at the Marietta Times in Marietta, Ohio. When he moved to New Jersey, he joined the Courier News and worked there as a photo editor for seven years before...
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Feb 15, 2012 11:43 AM
South King Media

A network of six hyperlocals in Washington State
By Maura R. O'Connor
BURIEN, WASHINGTON — In 2007, Scott Schaefer, an Emmy Award-winning comedy writer who worked on shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy and The Arsenio Hall Show, decided to create some comedy websites from his home in King County, Washington. He quickly discovered that getting advertising or creating revenue for comedy sites was extraordinarily difficult. "You're competing at a national level," says Schaefer. "Nothing was sticking." He decided to start another hobby on the side, a blog that would cover...
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Jul 21, 2011 12:18 PM
Sports Gab Network

A network of over seventy sports blogs with a special focus on the NFL
By Erik Shilling
MOUNT LAUREL, NEW JERSEY — An increasingly large player in the world of sports fan blogs, the Sports Gab Network has been one of several such news sites in the past couple of years to give many of the traditional online sports news sites a run for their money. The site was founded with just one contributor in 2006, when an NFL blog written from the perspective of a man on the street (and not a man in a press...
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