Taking the Local Blogging Plunge

Are you happy with your local paper's news coverage? If not, why not? What would you change if you could? Well, you can. Blogging offers the platform for doing just that, and more.

I've been thinking about creating a local blog for some time, but always chicken out for one reason or another. What if I sound dumb? What if no one reads it? Or worse yet, what if they read it and hate it? But...what if they love it? What's that saying? Can't win if you don't play?

I'm playing. I created my local blog about the Southern California coastal city, Long Beach. I'm an LB native, still working and living in this city of nearly 500,000 residents. We have a major newspaper, the Long Beach Press Telegram, and several small gazettes published by different neighborhoods in the city. Most of the publications have a noticeably liberal slant and are concerned more with politics and infrastructure.

In order to succeed in anything, you have to offer something better, or at least different, from the competition. My 'something' is a totally different angle on area news: the people behind the city's pulse. I'm taking this from the most organic level, such as retirements, weddings, anniversaries and the likes, to a wider human interest appeal, such as personal stories of local business owners and opinions of city visitors.

I'm also covering major news stories affecting residents, but will again seek the hidden human interest story in all headlines. Blogs are no longer the exclusive medium for reader commenting; nearly all the news sources in my city have websites with integrated commenting now. But my kind of blog can cover things that would never make it into the main street press, and most people still get a kick out of seeing themselves online.

I think I'll draw a readership for a couple more reasons not already mentioned. I'm a good writer who loves writing (many excellent writers don't really enjoy it), I'm creative, interested in marketing and doggedly persistent.

So, I'm jumping in. At this very instant my local blog has zero subscribers and no hits per day other than from my own IP. There are three other established local websites which I decided against linking to or advertising on for the time being. One has a large following, but a different approach from mine. It's concerned with breaking news and special investigations. It's also very unappealing visually, so at least I've got that working in my favor. You can see it at longbeachreport.com . The other two are smaller personal news sites that I cannot determine readership for. The commenting level is pretty low on both and they mostly repeat briefer headlines already covered in the paper.

Besides a genuine interest in neighborhood journalism, I'm also out to make a buck, well actually several thousand bucks a month. Think about it - a local blog can potentially attract thousands of readers from a highly targeted geographical audience, exactly the one local advertisers want to reach. Ultimately, I want to pay my monthly mortgage of $1,900 with advertising revenue from the blog. Can I do it? Follow my journey and find out!