CJR's Guide to Online News Startups

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Mar 1, 2012 04:14 PM
55423.info

A community college-affiliated hyperlocal for Richfield, Minn.
By Leah Binkovitz
RICHFIELD, MINNESOTA — Mark Plenke, a journalism and communications instructor at Normandale Community College, created 55423.info during his recent yearlong sabbatical, envisioning the site as both a news outlet for the town of Richfield and a hands-on course for his students. Before launching the site (which takes its name from Richfield's zip code), Plenke conducted a survey of 43 community members at a...
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Jul 27, 2011 02:53 PM
A2Politico

Accountability journalism in Ann Arbor, Mich.
By Erik Shilling
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — [UPDATED September 16, 2011] When the daily Ann Arbor News announced in July 2009 that it would cease publication and be replaced by a two day a week print product with a website, the college town of Ann Arbor, Mich. suddenly became, after 174 years, a city without a daily newspaper. That's when Patricia Lesko, a higher-education book publisher and thirty-year...
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Dec 29, 2010 12:02 AM
Alaska Dispatch

Enterprise reporting from the Last Frontier
By Michael Meyer
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — Alaska Dispatch is a regional reporting powerhouse. A for-profit that fights aggressively for online ad dollars, the Dispatch still manages to be generous with its editorial budget. It sent a reporter all the way to the Gulf Coast to cover the BP spill and the potential fallout for Alaska's own oil industry. The site was also the first news outlet to...
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Jun 13, 2011 04:27 PM
All Over Albany

Conversational news, events, and culture for the New York capital region
By Dylan DePice
ALBANY, NEW YORK — All Over Albany is a conversation starter. The Albany, N.Y.-based blog covers local news, events, and culture with a mission to provide its readers with fodder for a casual but informed exchange. Editors Mary Darcy and Greg Dahlmann created the site in 2008 after working together at WAMC Northeast Public Radio. At the time, they sensed that there was a...
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Feb 13, 2012 04:17 PM
ARLnow.com

Community, crime, and culture news for a D.C. suburb
By Tyler Jones
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA — Shortly after noon on Aug. 25, 2010, Dimas Pinson was waiting for the Orange Line train at the Virginia Square Metro station in Arlington, Va. when he heard someone shout, "Get off the tracks!" A man suffering from an epileptic seizure had fallen onto the tracks across the platform and was unresponsive. As a train appeared in the tunnel, Pinson, a retired Marine Corps...
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Jun 8, 2011 12:17 PM
Ars Technica

The old guard of tech news, mixing context, the long view, and a sense of humor
By Isaac Olson
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Since its founding in 1998, Ars Technica has grown to become a trusted, go-to source for news, reviews, and information about scientific advancements, technological breakthroughs, video gaming, tech policy, gadgetry, software, hardware, and everything in between. However, Ken Fisher, the site's Massachusetts-based founder and editor-in-chief, claims Ars Technica's success as one of the oldest and largest tech-focused websites isn't...
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Aug 12, 2011 12:54 PM
Aspen Journalism

Collaborative investigations for a Colorado ski town
By Maura R. O'Connor
ASPEN, COLORADO — Aspen is one of the few small cities in America that has competing daily newspapers--the Aspen Daily News and The Aspen Times. But after the economic recession in 2008, both papers were forced to severely trim their staff and resources, leading one local journalist to question the future of journalism in the Colorado community of around 60,000...
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Jan 13, 2012 11:47 AM
Baltimore Brew

Hard news for Charm City
By Alex Fekula
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND — After seventeen years as a staff writer and reporter at The Washington Post, Fern Shen opted to take a buyout amid significant downsizing at the paper. But she wanted to stay in the news business, and felt that Baltimore, the city she called home throughout her time at the Post, needed "more journalistic boots on the ground," as well as "something more...
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Jan 5, 2011 08:00 PM
Baristanet

Conversational hyperlocal news for New Jersey's Essex County
By Mike Madden
MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY — There's something about the smell of steaming coffee grinds that sets the curious journalist in everyone... percolating. Coffee-guzzlers have always used cafes as something of a casual newsroom, a place for gossiping and sharing tidbits about everything from daytime soaps to national politics. And that was the starting point for Debbie Galant and Liz George, the editors, founders, and owners of the...
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Oct 26, 2011 06:00 PM
Berkeleyside

News and notes from California's most quotable town
By Daniel Luzer
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — Frances Dinkelspiel had worked as a journalist for two decades--reporting for the Syracuse Newspapers and the San Jose Mercury News--before she and two other colleagues started Berkeleyside.com. In Dinkelspiel's opinion, Berkeley is too interesting a city not to have its own hyperlocal news site. "The University of California's here, it has this really long liberal radical political tradition, it's the...
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Jun 6, 2012 01:47 PM
Big World Magazine

A travel webzine that pays its contributors
By Tom Marcinko
NEW YORK, NY — Brooklyn-based editor and publisher Mary D'Ambrosio has taught a graduate level summer travel writing course at New York University for the past decade. A couple of years ago, she noticed something about her students' work: she liked it better than the usual travel magazine fare. "They weren't going to write 'Ten Hot Hotels in Rome,'" she says. "They were going to...
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Aug 18, 2011 12:25 PM
Birthplace Magazine

News and reviews for the NYC hip hop scene
By Julia Pyper
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Birthplace Magazine was created with a mission: to highlight the best of New York hip hop. The name comes from New York's status as the musical genre's hometown. Built on a solid foundation of ideas and expertise, the website has gained momentum, but now faces a number of marketing and editorial challenges before it can continue to expand....
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Jan 4, 2011 10:35 PM
Bleacher Report

A sports news behemoth where fans do the writing, reporting, and search engine optimization
By Chris Benz
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — Since its launch in 2008 after two years of development and beta testing, Bleacher Report has become a major player in online sports media. A unique combination of social networking and sports reporting, the Web site attracts a rapidly growing audience of about sixteen million unique visitors a month, according to the company. It provides Web content to partners like The Los...
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Mar 24, 2011 12:11 PM
Boise Guardian

Pugnacious reporting on Boise's institutions
By Chris Benz
BOISE, IDAHO — The Boise Guardian, a one-man muckraking blog in Boise, Idaho, has developed an outsized influence and a regular following, thanks to the energy of its proprietor/ reporter, Dave Frazier. No friend of city hall, Frazier has an Idaho court decision named after him. In 2005, he sued the city of Boise for taking out a loan on a new police station...
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Mar 20, 2012 01:30 PM
Borderzine.com

Bilingual reporting by Latino college journalists
By Tom Marcinko
EL PASO, TEXAS — Borderzine.com director Zita Arocha founded the site at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) with two goals. "One is to tell the unreported stories of the [U.S.-Mexico] border region, which mainstream media doesn't do very well," says Arocha, a senior lecturer in journalism at UTEP. The second is to create "a pipeline" into the journalism profession...
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