Neighborhood blogs: the mom-and-pop news business

News blogs about Seattle neighborhoods are sprouting like weeds. Their territory can be as small as the blocks immediately surrounding a park or as vast as West Seattle, created to rally against outside forces or in response to a certain event. They can vary from providing news straight-up to being heavily dosed with humor. Still other news blogs are product tests. Some have advertisements, others don't. Neighborhood blogs can even be "killed" and then reborn with advertising and multiuser capability. Whatever their flavor, even bloggers like to meet in person. A few of the people behind emerging and established neighborhood blogs in Seattle met over pizza and beer recently.

"My name is Andrew, and I'm a blogger," said Andrew Taylor with a deliberate nod to a very different type of meeting. It was first names and blog affiliations around three long tables pushed together in the back room at Piecora's Pizza at the intersection of Capitol Hill and the Central District. Most of the attendees had been invited as news bloggers of record, a handful of others had sought out the informal meeting from a reference in Jerry Large's Seattle Times column, "The news, block by block."

The "guest" list was by no means inclusive, nor was it designed to be exclusive. A current list of neighborhood blogs would be outdated within a day. Most of the 14 present had crossed paths before, often in previous professional capacities. The greatest commonality was curiosity. The type of people who become consumed with tracking land-use permits, police reports, liquor permits, and sirens in the night are bound to be curious about one another. There was discussion about user interface, moderating comments, and ad revenue. I wanted to know: Why are you doing this? I'd assumed the answer would be a cross between neighborhood activism and journalistic interest, but the recent proliferation also suggests people think there's potential for profit and are rushing to stake their claim.

The informal organizers for the event were Central District News, the West Seattle Blog, and Capitol Hill Seattle. The West Seattle Blog couldn't attend due to "breaking news." Central District News is also the beta for Scott Durham's "Instant Journalist" software, which facilitates multiuser reader reportage. His brother, Matt, writes as CD Guy. Justin Carder of Capitol Hill Seattle also worked on the invite list; he's formerly of Marchex, a company which connects consumers and advertisers online. He set up Taylor's blog for the Miller Park Neighborhood Association. As of May 30, Carder had "killed" the original Capitol Hill News blog and started using Instant Journalist to create a multiuser blog that will now encompass the Miller Park neighborhood. From outside of Seattle, Scott Schaefer is publisher and editor for B-Town Blog (Burien/White Center); childhood friend Mark Newman is in charge of advertising. Except for me and a woman who writes as Seadevi at Capitol Hill Triangle, all the attendees were men.

Even before the pizza arrived, it was obvious that journalistic tendencies were the common denominator — and probably the predictor for who will still be at the table in two years. Below the surface of a neighborhood blog beats the heart of at least one newshound. Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog has 30 years of media experience, starting with her college newspaper. Scott Schaeffer and Mark Newman of B-Town Blog date their friendship and writing ventures back to seventh grade (their self-produced West Seattle Chinook). Taylor and others in the Miller Park Neighborhood Association also used to produce a very local paper called The Miller Times to combat crime. Twenty years later, Andrew Taylor declares, "blogging is the easiest way to become a neighborhood organizer." As for writing about his Capitol Hill neighborhood, Justin Carder says, "It's what I was born to do."

Although neighborhood blogs are known for covering the mundane (missing cat, restaurant closure) they are uniquely positioned to communicate a larger news story when it affects a neighborhood, be it a murder, storm damage, or landmark controversy. The West Seattle Blog, which is considered the benchmark for neighborhood news sites around here, launched in December 2005, but it was the windstorm of December 2006 that brought it purpose and attention. The subsequent success of the husband-and-wife team in generating page views, general media attention, and advertising dollars has spawned copycat sites throughout the city, often without the original content. Neighborhood blogs without advertising have existed for years now, such as the Rainier Valley Post, which daily proves its claim, "We're obsessed with South Seattle." But it was likely the West Seattle Blog's ability to generate advertising revenue that really raised the antennae of online entrepreneurs (not necessarily even locals). For example, Brent Fosso of IbuySeattleHomes.com attended in hopes of gleaning insight for a start-up Ballard blog that he hopes will be a profitable sideline and "a place to put my own ad."

However, those who get truly bitten by the news blog bug are increasingly driven by the need to gather ever more information: The Durham brothers got a police scanner for Christmas. Even with citizen reporting, the most complete news blog becomes a product that is unlikely to generate profit based on the hours it takes to feed the blog. Reporting the news "block by block," as Large described it in his column, can lead to its own news and consequences, more comments, more tips, more to cover. As Record of West Seattle Blog later said, just the act of providing information to citizens that might not otherwise be available is a form of community activism.

As a Little League party at the next table drove off the bloggers, there was talk of further networking on a Facebook site and holding events in other neighborhoods. Despite a veritable stampede to cover certain demographics, other areas will go unclaimed (often the ones most in need of such resources). Those at the table in two years' time will not necessarily be the same as those sharing pizza and beer in 2008; sites that become indispensable to a neighborhood will do so on the backs of a core person or team willing to let the site consume their lives. For the self-employed journalists providing real-time news, the deadline is constant. "It's not a matter of how many times you post per week," Scott Schaefer of B-Town Blog said, looking straight across the table at me. "It's a matter of how many hours per day you don't."

Crosscut contributor Peggy Sturdivant's blog At Large in Ballard is on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Neighborhood Webtown, but it is not a news blog.

• Peggy Sturdivant is a freelancer who writes a weekly column on community issues for the Ballard News-Tribune. You can reach her in care of editor@crosscut.com.