New Media in the Neighborhood

We discovered a new media site serving the neighborhoods just over the Delaware line, while surfing the net this afternoon. It is the Bear-Glasgow Observer and our first reaction is that this is a great product serving a market niche.   To start with the site is attractive, but in addition it appears to contain lots of original content.  As we’ve said so many times before it is largely about the content for successful media will provide lots of unique material.  The founding editor/publisher says that he decided to start the virtual newspaper as a “place where residents in the growing area of the Route 40 corridor could find good community journalism and local news and events that aren’t being covered elsewhere.” 

This sounds like a successful business model to us.  Provide a place to find citizen journalism, local news and events that aren’t being covered elsewhere, and couple that with an attractive news portal that has professionally crafted articles, and you’re on to something.  Of course, the financial barriers for entry into this virtual journalism world of journalism have been so greatly reduced since you don’t need the printing press anymore.  Although in the case of the Observer we notice that the editor mentions that his goal is to also start printing a weekly serial this year.  There can be synergy between the two, when properly coupled.

We think the Observer is headed in the right direction.  We’re going to bookmark it on our site so we can check in often for local news that isn’t available elsewhere from legacy Media in Delaware.    We hope to see more new media sites in the future since there is a need for someone to covering local happenings.