Next Door Media Blog

Apr 14

Exploring new models of local news

I moderated a panel this week at Seattle City Hall about neighborhood news and several other promising approaches to creating sustainable local news businesses on the web. Among those on the panel: Tracy Record from WestSeattleBlog, Scott Dunham from Neighborlogs and CentralDistrictNews, and Mike Davidson from Newsvine.

I posted a quick summary here, and you can watch video of the event here. It’s interesting to note that Seattle is leading the curve nationwide on new local news models: WestSeattleBlog was the first 24/7 neighborhood news community, Seattle PI was the first major newspaper to go online only, Neighborlogs was the first neighborhood news platform and our own Next Door Media was the first neighborhood news blog network in the country.

Apr 1

MyBallard.com surpasses 50k uniques

We’ve been astounded at the growth of MyBallard.com, Next Door Media’s first neighborhood site to launch. At last check, we cracked the 50,000 monthly unique user mark. How can that be, you ask, in a neighborhood of 30,000 people? Well, Google Analytics treats unique users as unique computers, so if a Ballard resident reads us both at home and at work, that’s two unique users. We also have a fair amount of people who don’t live in the neighborhood who visit on occasion. And we have surprisingly high reach inside the neighborhood, thanks to our very active users, who continue to power the site with their contributions. We’re still growing fast: 10-15 percent a month.

Mar 28

Follow Next Door Media on Twitter

Because everyone is doing this Twitter thing now.

Mar 27

About once a week, an original story on MyBallard.com or one of our other neighborhood sites is covered by a newspaper or TV station. Like this story of people getting tattoos of Edith Macefield’s house (the 85 year-old woman who turned down $1 million to move, so developers built a 5-story building around her tiny home.) Within a few hours of posting the story, three TV stations were on it.

Of course, the vast majority of time, the local media companies who follow our original stories don’t bother to credit us, even in their online versions. That’s why we’re happy to see that SeattlePI.com linked this story directly from their home page — something they’re increasingly doing now that they’ve switched to a web-only operation.

Mar 19

My Ballard mentioned by Time.com

As a possible future model of local journalism in light of the Seattle PI’s switch to the web. Our first national press!

Jan 2

MyBallard.com sets traffic record

After Seattle’s epic week of snow, MyBallard.com shattered its old traffic record with 215,000 page views and 26,500 unique users for the month of December. Wow! PhinneyWood.com and QueenAnneView.com also set new traffic records. This proves a universal truth of news: weather is always a big story.

Dec 31

A little about the founders

Next Door Media began when Kate Bergman registered MyBallard.com shortly after moving to the Ballard neighborhood with her husband Cory in 2007. Both of us worked for KING TV at the time — Kate as coordinating producer for the morning news and Cory as the head of KING5.com. Since then, Cory has moved on to msnbc.com as director of business development, and Kate still works at KING. Both of us have worked in journalism our entire careers — Cory even won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards, two Emmy awards and an EpPy during his stay at KING. While we come from the traditional world of news, we’re beginning to believe that “news powered by your neighborhood” (our slogan) is the future of local journalism.

Probably our favorite snow photo sent to us by My Ballard readers, courtesy of Jimmy. We received nearly 100 photos of Snowmageddon from dozens of readers. See more here.

Welcome to Next Door Media’s blog

Next Door Media is a network of five neighborhood news sites in Seattle, including the flagship MyBallard.com. If you’re curious about this sort of thing, we’ve created a blog so you can follow some of our lessons learned and new developments in the brave new world of hyperlocal.