BLOGGER: Jay Sears
FEATURED BLOG(S):
MyRye.com
TWITTER:
@MyRye

Another week, another really interesting conversation with a great local blogger — this time Jay Sears of MyRye.com. The biggest takeaway from this week’s chat? A blog can truly be a powerful community-organizing platform, when its power is wielded effectively. In a small town in New York, Jay Sears was able to take a neighborhood concern and engage his fellow citizens via his blog, yielding tangible results. There are those that think that blogs simply don’t happen– not effectively, anyway– in smaller towns and communities like Rye. MyRye.com proves that they do — while Brooklyn may be the ‘bloggiest’ community in the country, there are certainly bloggers in smaller towns and communities that are finding real success. Community organizers and community-minded bloggers can certainly take a page from Sears’ playbook.

Esther Brown, Community Manager at Outside.in: Tell me a little bit about yourself, Jay.

Jay Sears, Publisher of MyRye.com: We have lived in Rye for nine years. We moved from the Upper West Side of Manhattan after our second son was born. I live on in the Bradford park area of Rye with my wife, Lauren Rosen, and our three boys Ethan, Noah and Jonathan. Lauren serves as the co-president of the Osborn School PTO, one of three elementary schools in Rye. She is a social worker and is currently working as the Student Assistance Counselor at Eastchester High School. I help run an online advertising company in New York City.

Jay Sears

Why did you choose to move to Rye?

Rye has a lot of refugees from the Upper West Side and Upper East Side. There also seem to be a lot of ex-pats in Rye: lots of Japanese, British and Dutch who come to work in New York City and find Rye to be a great place to raise their families. The public education is excellent. Rye is also on the shores of the Long Island Sound, and about 20 percent of our six square miles are open space: city parks, county parks, golf courses, athletic fields- some are quite unique, like The Rye Marshlands Conservancy.

Rye is one of the places John Jay grew up in, and there’s a tremendous amount of American history in Rye. For instance, the Post Road, which was built in the 1700s. One of the things we’ve written about are the different mile markers on the Post Road– our readers have been great in helping us locate the hard-to-find ones.

Why do you blog, and how did you start?

MyRye.com is a web site for Rye, New York enthusiasts— people who love living here and others who are connected to Rye City. We write—and our readers have contributed over 4,000 comments—on Rye art, Rye events, Rye food, Rye city council, Rye green issues, Rye history, Rye people, Rye schools as well as other pertinent events and happenings around Rye.

The site began in 2006 when neighbors in the Bradford Park area of Rye gathered to ask the city for a four-way STOP sign at the intersection of Florence Avenue and Bradford. It’s a lot of work to convince the city that it’s a good idea to install a four-way STOP sign, so we thought we’d document the whole process, from talking to the mayor and the city engineer to watching the city conduct their traffic studies.

We posted the letters signed by the 40+ neighbors and then documented— hopefully with some seriousness, humor and aplomb— the process of working with City Hall and a lot of others. I think that having the campaign out in an open place like a website made the issue very visible, and everyone was realy diligent about it. After eight months we got our STOP sign and MyRye.com was on a roll.

For the first year or so, it wasn’t more than a handful of people that knew about the website. We now have over 3,000 visitors each month in a city with only 5,000 homes.

MyRye.com began publishing on January 1, 2006– over four years ago. For the last couple of years we have been publishing every weekday.

What is the hardest or most challenging part about blogging?

Occasionally you panic that you have run out of stories—that there will simply never be any more stories emanating from a small city of 15,000 residents. Just when all hope seems to be lost the flood gates open—ideas flow, email and phone calls arrive, comments are posted—in the end there never was and never will be a shortage of material.

What is the best part about blogging?

The best part about MyRye.com is when residents use the web site as a platform to discuss an issue. We can start things off, but it’s the residents that engage with the site and each other that make the site vibrant.

What was the most popular post on your blog (views, comments, reactions)? Why do you think it was so popular? What post are you most proud of?

Many “hot button” issues from of Rye City Council receive a lot of community attention. Our stories are so varied—from Rye residents such as John Thain and Alex Rodriguez—to the annual Rye Little League Parade—to possible environmental malfeasances at the Jay Heritage site to the closing of the Durland Scout Center on Milton Point—it is too hard to pick a favorite.

What do you do to promote your blog?

MyRye.com has grown to over 3,000 readers a month solely via word-of-mouth.

Of course, there were also events and happenings that we wrote about that were newsworthy in their own right, which then caused the website to get more attention. For instance, in 2007, when the website was 16 months old, we had terrible flooding in Rye, and Rye became a FEMA disaster zone. Lots of people had damage, millions of dollars in property damage, in fact. We were able to have videos and photos up on the website pretty quickly, and because the website also has a unique voice, I think it can be a pretty effective place to galvanize everyone and bring people together.

What has blogging done for you, personally? Professionally?

With a day job in lower Manhattan, I still manage to be engaged with the local Rye community.

What have you learned through blogging?

It takes a village. MyRye.com is set apart from other local media because of the engagement of the community through both contributed articles and comments on published stories.

I’ve had the real privilege of getting to know a lot of the people in Rye City who really care about what’s going on here– they show up for the various public meetings and are really dedicated. It’s been a real honor for me to be so engaged with so many of these folks and the caliber of people in Rye is, frankly, remarkable– in that so much of Rye is made up and driven by people like that, who care about their community and volunteer and put in so much of their own time.

What are your future plans for MyRye.com?

Hyperlocal publishing will be one of the next great areas of innovation for the Internet. Very soon, MyRye.com will be releasing a mobile application (an iPhone app to begin) that will be “location aware” and let users rate and submit comments (written and audio) and pictures of all things Rye such as restaurants and businesses.

When MyRye.com readers go crazy for the Maple Tree Burger at Town Dock restaurant, they can take a picture of the burger, rate the restaurant and instantly share this delicious insight with the entire MyRye.com community.

We are also renovating our home in Rye with the help of Rye local Craig Simandl of BHK Builders and Judy Martin of Rye’s Green Home Consulting. We plan to report on the renovation including several green initiatives such as cellulose insulation, geothermal heating and cooling and solar electric. By sharing hopefully we will encourage other people to share their Rye home renovation stories, especially as people begin to incorporate green aspects into their homes.

MyRye.com will always be “all Rye, all the time” and great champions of the place 15,000 of us are lucky enough to call home.

If the lessons from Sears and MyRye.com are any indication, we’re reminded that it truly takes a village to raise a blog. We also come to realize that a blog, in and of itself, is not a very powerful thing. Rather, a blog is a vehicle, a platform that can be used as a means to an end. And, when channeled effectively, a blog can indeed be a very powerful tool. After all, if a blogger posts in the forest, is anyone around to comment?

P.S.: If you’d like to be featured in our ‘Bloggers We Love’ series (or you’d like to nominate your favorite local blogger(s) for inclusion), we’d love to hear from you! Simply send an email to esther[at]outside[dot]in.

BLOGGER: Corey Jackson
FEATURED BLOG(S):
Downtown Lynn
TWITTER:
@CoJackso

DOWNTOWNLYNN.COM

If ever you wanted to prove with authority that a blogger is truly making a difference and impacting their community for the better via their blog, Corey Jackson, author of DowntownLynn.com, would be the guy you bring to show-and-tell.

Jackson began DowntownLynn.com in 2007, after purchasing a loft in the neighborhood in July of 2006. Prior to 2006, Jackson had been living in the Boston area, but when he decided he wanted to stop renting and to become a homeowner, he decided to look beyond the usual Boston-area go-to destinations of Cambridge and Somerville.

He started looking into many of the old mill communities in Massachusetts and came across a blog called Lynn Lofts, The Skinny, where a newbie homeowner named Marcus was chronicling the ongoing condo developments ‘in the currently gentrifying area of Central Square, Lynn, Massachusetts.’

“While many old industrial towns in Massachusetts – major cities, even—have really been abandoned, Lynn has done a really great job of converting these old buildings into lofts,” Jackson says. “My parents grew up in Lynn, and my grandparents and great grandparents actually grew up there, too. After I realized I had those connections, I really fell in love with Lynn and moved there.”

IF YOU BLOG IT, THEY WILL COME

After moving to Lynn, starting the blog just seemed natural to Jackson. “I realized that a blogger got me to move to Lynn, and that I could potentially get other people to move there, too,” he says.

But getting people to choose Lynn over, say, Cambridge is no easy feat, as Jackson himself will tell you.

“We have a really bad PR problem in Lynn,” Jackson says. “There’s an old jingle about Lynn – ‘Lynn, Lynn, city of sin,’— it’s the 5th most dangerous city in Massachusetts. It’s like Dorchester, where there are really, really great areas and really, really bad areas. The downtown area where I live has a lot going on and is really, really gorgeous.”

When Jackson started the blog, he didn’t have very many readers at all but, just as the city itself steadily changed, Jackson’s readership also grew. He started blogging about downtown businesses and goings-on, trying to entice people to find and explore all that Lynn has to offer.

“At first, I really didn’t have any readers—I think it was just a couple people from my building. I was the first person to move into my building of about 20 units, and I do think I actually helped them sell some units, actually,” Jackson says. “People would search for information about real estate in downtown Lynn and come across my blog. Then they would reach out to me and ask me questions about the neighborhood.”

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL

Still, readership was small for Jackson’s first year or two of blogging, but when the campaign efforts for the November 2009 mayoral election heated up in Lynn, things started picking up for DowntownLynn.com.

Lynn’s longtime mayor, Edward J. Clancy, Jr., was being challenged by a member of the Lynn City Council, Judith F. Kennedy, and Jackson felt that coverage of the election by Lynn’s daily newspaper, The Daily Item, was biased in favor of the incumbent. Jackson decided to work for Kennedy’s campaign, as well as to use his blog to provide an alternative to The Daily Item‘s coverage of the mayoral election.

“I do not claim to be a newspaper or a journalist in any sense of the word,” Jackson says, “but I try to let more of the truth out there so people can get to know both sides of an issue, in this case the mayoral campaign. Lynn is Massachusetts’ 9th largest city – it has nearly 90,000 residents, and over 16,000 voted in the mayoral election.”

In the end, Kennedy – the challenger who Jackson supported – beat out the incumbent, Clancy, by less than 30 votes.

“Throughout that time, my blog readership was up from about 3 unique visitors per month to over 300 uniques per month,” Jackson says. “I know a lot of downtowners who did cast a vote for Kennedy because of the blog. It definitely changed the dynamic of the election.”

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

Apparently Jackson isn’t the only one who felt the dynamics changing in Lynn. The Daily Item— who Jackson was fairly vocal and negative about during the mayoral campaign, by his own admission— had clearly taken note of Jackson’s blog and apparently got upset by what he was doing.

Upset enough to refuse his advertising dollars, in fact.

“After the election, I was excited – I had readers, and people were starting to comment with regularity; there was a real dialogue happening on the blog, which is what really interests me the most, anyway,” Jackson says. “I hadn’t been in Lynn that long, and I certainly don’t have all the answers, so I really wanted to increase that dialogue and increase readership of the blog.”

Because of the dearth of local news sources in Lynn, in early 2010, Jackson decided it would be most effective for him to advertise in The Daily Item. He requested a rate sheet from the paper and, after he received it, Jackson emailed the advertising department with a few questions. Instead of garnering a response from the advertising department, what Jackson got instead was an email from the paper’s General Manager, Phil Ouellette, asking Jackson to call him directly.

“Basically, [Ouellette] wanted to know why I wanted to advertise in The Daily Item if I hated his paper so much. The truth is, they’re really the only place to advertise in Lynn,” Jackson says. “I don’t have any personal beef against [Ouellette], I just think it’s funny. [The Daily Item’s reaction] to bloggers just doesn’t make any sense. Just because I made a few off-handed comments about the paper, he’s going to refuse my advertising dollars? The thing is, I also talk up The Daily Item all the time on my blog. I talk about their $10 online subscription, and I think it’s awesome. [The Daily Item is] a very important resource for the city to have. I really believe that the blogs along with The Daily Item is the right blend of content for the public.”

After Jackson initially posted about being turned down by The Daily Item on his blog, the story was picked up by Universal Hub as well as several other local news sources.

Pretty soon, Jackson’s readership skyrocketed to over 1100 unique visitors a month.

“It was exactly what I was trying to do,” Jackson says.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM, JOIN ‘EM

The Daily Item isn’t the only one who’s taken note of Jackson’s work on DowntownLynn.com, however. Jackson and his fellow Lynn bloggers have had a real, meaningful impact upon the city’s government.

For instance, many of Lynn’s bloggers are big proponents of Common Cause – which, according to it’s own website, is “a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.”

Common Cause calls on governments to publish their meeting agendas, meeting minutes, bylaws and budgets online, Jackson explains, something Jackson and his blogging compatriots have been trying to get Lynn’s government to do for some time— and it looks like they’re finally being heard. The city is finally putting the budget online this year (look for it around July, 2010), as well as the minutes from selected committee meetings.

“When you walk into City Hall in Lynn, there’s not a computer on hardly anyone’s desk,” Jackson says. “There are some communal computers, where people check their email, but only in some departments. That’s part of the challenge— the city doesn’t really understand technology and how it can help them communicate with the public.”

Jackson says he thinks the city will probably publish the budget in .PDF form, but adds that he hopes they’ll also release the raw data so that local bloggers can analyze it.

“I never dreamed that I would be this involved in my local government,” Jackson says. “It has been really eye opening. I never thought I would have this kind of impact, where the mayor is calling me into her office for a one-on-one to discuss the budget, or where the city’s Economic Development Director reaches out to me to thank me for the positive things my blog is doing for downtown businesses.”

EVERYBODY LOVES DOWNTOWNLYNN.COM

The city government isn’t the only believer in DowntownLynn.com.

“Restaurant owners thank me all the time,” Jackson says. “They’ll usually just give me a free dessert or something, but once I got a bill that just wasn’t fair [because they basically wanted to feed me for free]. ‘I’m here to support you,’ I told the owner. ‘I don’t want to eat for free.’ So, they gave me a new bill.”

Jackson says he likes supporting the restaurants and small businesses in downtown Lynn because he knows he can make an impact.

“Some of the restaurants downtown are so small and so ‘mom and pop,’ – they’re just starting out and they’ve put all their money into the restaurant. They don’t have money for things like nice signs or websites, so in some cases they’re using the reviews I write for them as their websites,” Jackson says. “They don’t have a lot of resources, so we—local bloggers— can help in that way too. Just by posting their menu, we can make an impact. It’s hard to find some of these places, so just letting people know that they exist, that can help.”

WELL, NOT EVERYBODY

Of course, not everyone loves DowntownLynn.com. Clearly, The Daily Item isn’t a fan, but there are a certainly some other folks whose feathers have been ruffled by Jackson’s blog. In fact, when asked what the most difficult thing is about blogging, Jackson doesn’t respond with the almost universal lament about not having enough time to blog (on the contrary, Jackson says he spends only 4-5 hours a week on his blog, mostly in the wee hours of the morning, since he doesn’t sleep much, or on the weekends, when he’ll write several posts, then schedule them to be run later in the week).

No, what Jackson finds most worrisome stems from this country’s lawsuit-happy culture.

“Lately I’ve been worried about liability,” Jackson says. “I just called my insurance agent and added defamation coverage to my policy. I’m not worried about being sued by public officials, but rather private citizens. I try to be truthful, but there was a piece on NPR recently about frivolous lawsuits, and about how people are getting slammed with meritless lawsuits.”

With defamation coverage adding only about $9 to Jackson’s homeowner’s policy annually, it seems like something that nearly every blogger should consider obtaining.

Jackson also says that legal action isn’t the only retaliation he fears sometimes, recounting an incident that occurred at a debate hosted by the local Chamber of Commerce during the 2009 mayoral campaign.

“I had been blogging really frequently about the election and I was not nice to [then mayor Edward J. Clancy, Jr.] in my posts, because I didn’t believe in him at all. Somebody walked by me at the debate and said ‘Hey, Corey Jackson, how are you?!’ in a really snide voice. I asked someone who it was, and it turns out it was [the former mayor’s] wife.”

Jackson says he was so caught off guard by the comment that he went home immediately (not out of fear — but rather to blog about the incident, of course).

“That was the first time when I was like, hmm, am I putting myself at risk? Are my car tires going to get slashed? I think my wife worries about that more than I do, but it’s still a consideration.”

Jackson’s concern here is not unwarranted – in fact, more and more bloggers are obtaining liability insurance, after some have been sued successfully for defamation and libel.

This is especially interesting when you consider the protections that journalists are afforded by the companies they write for, as well as by the First Amendment. While bloggers are certainly covered by the First Amendment in their ability to exercise free speech, they’re not technically considered members of the press by most authorities (such as the FTC). Some state courts have ruled that traditional shield laws (which protect journalists) do not apply to bloggers – so Jackson may be doing a smart thing by obtaining insurance, even as Congress has debated the inclusion of bloggers in proposed Federal shield laws in recent years.

THE BEST BLOGGING ADVICE

For our part, we certainly hope Jackson doesn’t give in to the haters or to the fear of lawsuits or other backlash, and as it happens, we may have had a bit of an impact ourselves, in terms of ensuring that he continues to do what he’s doing. When we asked him what the best piece of blogging advice is that he’s ever received, he response made us smile.

“It was recently, actually. I was reading somewhere that bloggers should try to ‘embrace the hate mail,’” Jackson said. “I get negative comments sometimes on the blog, I feel the need to defend myself sometimes, or else I hate mail really personally upset by it… wait a minute! That was on your blog! It really hit home! I really do get upset about it sometimes, and I shouldn’t – I should just be happy they’re reading!”

For our part here at Outside.in, it’s nice to know that someone is actually reading and benefiting from this ‘Bloggers We Love,’ series we’ve been doing— the advice Jackson is referring to was passed on to us by food blogger Liz Stambaugh, who was sagely advised by fellow Baltimore blogger Dara Bunjon. We love bloggers, and we’re always happy when we can share some good advice– so, for all you local bloggers out there (and wannabe local bloggers), remember: embrace the hate– and take some advice from Jackson, too:

“I think more people need to start writing. Because it’s working. They’re listening.”

P.S.: If you’d like to be featured in our ‘Bloggers We Love’ series (or you’d like to nominate your favorite local blogger(s) for inclusion), we’d love to hear from you! Simply send an email to esther[at]outside[dot]in.

BLOGGER: Tessa Horehled
FEATURED BLOG(S):
Drive A Faster Car (DaFC)
FEATURED WEBSITE:
Tessa Horehled
TWITTER:
@Tessa
@DriveAFasterCar
FACEBOOK:
Tessa Horehled on Facebook

DRIVE A FASTER CAR

Tessa Horehled started her blog Drive A Faster Car (DaFC), in 2001, nearly a decade ago.

The term ‘blog,’ wasn’t even coined until 1999. Mull over that for a moment.

I’m talking pre-WordPress, people. These were the days when AIM and chatrooms ruled the Internets— when bloggers were rubbing sticks together in the desert, trying to create fire. Blogger itself was just a tiny, tiny baby. Capito?

To say that Horehled was an “early adopter,” of blogging would be a glaring understatement. Think back to where you were in 2001. Did you even know what a blog was back then? I know I didn’t— not really, anyway.

In fact, like Horehled, I was still in high school in 2001. While she was delving into the early days of blogging full-steam ahead, I was probably in the midst of college applications, a path Horehled herself didn’t follow, due to the fact that blogging changed the arc of her life in a major way: after launching the blog and garnering the attention of an entertainment marketing company, Horehled dropped out of high school at 17 (during AP exam week, no less – much to her mother’s chagrin) and began working full time in the music industry.

Today, nearly a decade later, could an unknown high school student still launch a blog and leverage it to secure a full-time position, let alone a position in a highly competitive field such as the entertainment industry?

Does Horehled’s experience make you wish you had paid a little bit more attention to blogs about 10 years ago?

Does Horehled have war stories and advice to share from her nearly 10 years at the front lines of blogging? You bet she does.

Tessa Horehled

I’LL GO ANYWHERE I WANT TO GO

Horehled originally launched DaFC because her friends were constantly asking her for music recommendations and she simply got tired of repeating herself. So, she started a LiveJournal community that only she could post to, where she would share music recommendations and other information with her friends.

Then, something interesting happened.

“One day I realized that I didn’t know all the people who were commenting on my posts! It weirded me out a bit, but then I realized I had an audience,” Horehled says.

As her audience grew, Horehled experimented with different blogging platforms, moving first from LiveJournal to Blogger to MoveableType, eventually settling on WordPress, where DaFC continues to be hosted today.

I WANNA BE BIGGER, STRONGER

The blog has gone through many transformations and incarnations and continues to evolve, but at the core of the blog remains Horehled’s abiding love of music. As many music lovers will recognize, the name of the blog is inspired by lyrics from Coldplay’s track ‘Bigger, Stronger,’ off of their 1999 album: “I wanna be bigger, stronger, drive a faster car,” the song says. “Take me anywhere you want in seconds take me anywhere you want to go.”

According to Horehled, DaFC (and its musical inspiration, of course) is “about taking life full on with everything you’ve got and determining for yourself what will come ahead of you – progress, change and unabashed fervor.”

This is clearly how Horehled lives her own life.

“I was really very ambitious when I was younger—I like to think I still am, but I was definitely very ambitious then. [After dropping out of high school,] I worked in viral marketing and the entertainment industry for 6 years, nonstop. We merged with a local music management and record label, and I stayed on through that and ran street teams for everyone from Third Eye Blind to Gavin DeGraw—I really had a lot of fun,” she says.

BIGGER AND BETTER

After running street teams, Horehled went on to help start a record label with the former president of EarthLink—blogging all the while, of course— but, in the end, she realized something was out of balance.

“Ultimately, I decided that the music industry wasn’t the best fit for me—it consumed far too much of my personal life,” Horehled says. “Viral marketing is like social media 1.0 – it’s the same concept, there are just new tools now. My blog is a way to stay tied into the entertainment industry on some level—but it’s a very challenging industry to work in full time.”

As for her current full time gig, Horehled works as a Senior Strategist at a well-known interactive agency in Atlanta, Think Interactive, where she focuses on social media strategies for all of the company’s clients, as well as on internal social media education at the agency itself (fellow Social Media and Community Managers, take note: “There is huge value in having your technology department and your accounts team and other teams within your company communicate via social media and really understand it,” she says).

I CAN GO ANYWHERE I WANNA GO, AND DRIVE AROUND MY FASTER CAR

As Horehled’s role at Think Interactive evolves to allow her more time for blogging, she aspires to inject new vigor into DaFC’s brand. She says she is working to re-brand the blog from what began as primarily an Atlanta-centric music blog and move it into the realm of hyperlocal culture and entertainment blogs, eventually integrating the nearby towns of Athens and Decatur, GA, which she calls “little liberal islands in the state of Georgia.”

Horehled’s reasons for this intended expansion all come back to her true passions: music, her hometown, and building community. Horehled obviously loves Atlanta, but it’s clear that she also loves Decatur and Athens as well.

“Decatur is essentially just another great neighborhood in Atlanta in a lot of ways –it’s even more progressive than Atlanta – it’s a great little city. And Athens, [the home of the University of Georgia) is a young and vibrant city,” Horehled says.

Nevertheless, Horehled says, the music communities in Decatur and Athens are completely distinct from one other another, in addition to being distinct from the music community in Atlanta, something she would like to change.

“[The well-known Atlanta street] Ponce de Leon is a cultural divide in the city, especially for the younger side of the city. I think you can definitely look at Athens and Decatur as part of this as well—consider it in quadrants,” Horehled says. “There’s a very different type of music that’s being booked north of Ponce – singer songwriters, for example—than there is south of Ponce, which is known mostly for indie rock. Athens is it’s own scene, as is Decatur, which is where John Mayer and the Indigo Girls come from. The scenes tend to keep to themselves. There is some crossover, but it’s not in any mainstream sort of way.”

Horehled says she would love to redevelop DaFC in a way that brings all of these divergent music communities together. “Having DaFC really be able to bridge those gaps in a meaningful way would really help the music scene as a whole, but also, personally, I think [the current divide] is really holding Atlanta and those other cities back, as a whole,” she says.

But perhaps the most compelling reason for the blog’s rebranding after such a long time is that Horehled believes a rebrand may be necessary in order to ensure that DaFC remains relevant, compelling and engaging in the ever-changing landscape of the blogosphere.

“It’s always kinda been a little bit of a labor of love for me,” she explains. “I honestly don’t know what I would do without my blog. It’s definitely still a big part of who I’ve become, and ultimately I would love DaFC to be my full time job. I would love to be able to grow it to be a Gapers Block of Atlanta.”

AT THE TOUCH OF A BUTTON…

In the meantime, DaFC is like a really fun friend who knows everyone and always has the hook-up for the show, complete with the backstage pass.

“Being born and raised in Atlanta, people know me and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re DaFC !’ – that’s definitely fun,” Horehled says. “It’s also been fun seeing how the blogger meet-ups have evolved since I’ve started blogging – I love watching the interaction between bloggers from all different niches. In general, I tend to trust bloggers, because I know they’ve been in many of the same situations I’ve been in. I just love the overall culture of it all.”

When asked what some of her most memorable experiences of blogging have been, Horehled doesn’t hesitate:

“Shooting Nine Inch Nails at Bonnaroo 2009. It was supposed to be their last US show ever, in front of about 50,000 people. It was one of the biggest natural highs of my life,” she says.

“Also, David Arquette taking myself and a few others for a steak dinner at Chops during a promo tour for his directorial debut in ‘The Tripper.’”

Did I mention I wish I’d discovered blogging sooner?

I WILL SETTLE FOR NOTHING LESS

Horehled believes DaFC could be an alternative source of culture and entertainment news in Atlanta. She hopes to expand the blog and hire paid writers in the near future. She believes she can do this if she’s able to put as much energy into the blog as she did in 2008. “Back in 2008, I was laid off from Turner, and I took the opportunity to put a lot of time and energy into the blog,” Horehled says.

According to Horehled, DaFC reached its peak in December 2008, when it enjoyed some 40,000 unique visitors and about 120,000 total monthly visits. While the numbers are significantly lower right now, Horehled believes she can ramp her numbers back up once she’s able to get back to posting with greater frequency and regularity, as she was back in 2008.

“At that point, I had two interns and four writers writing for me on a regular basis. It was really fantastic – we were dong 4-10 blog posts a day and our audience responded really well to the increase in content. It’s something we’re looking to do more of, definitely.”

Even at a time when she’s not posting to her blog as often as she once was, Horehled remains well known in Atlanta. “Right now, in 2010, I can’t go even a day without receiving 1000 emails from publicists,” Horehled says. “It’s ridiculous – and it’s great! To this day, I still have Coldplay’s publicist emailing me, but to this day the traditional news source will still get the ticket to the show before I would. A lot of publicists are still generalizing that the larger the source, the more valuable the placement.”

Horehled thinks that the smaller news sources could prove to be valuable investments for publicists, however. “I tend to go back to my viral marketing roots,” she says. “I find that the smaller bloggers may have fewer influences on their content and may have a more dedicated audience, so they could have a bigger impact.”

I THINK I WANT TO CHANGE MY POSITION

Horehled is certainly hoping her blog can have a bigger impact than some of the larger publications saturating the Atlanta music, culture and entertainment market. She says that while only half of DaFC’s traffic comes from the state of Georgia (the rest comes from the Southeast as well as big cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago), she still sees the blog as an Atlanta-centric venture and knows that she can leverage her own knowledge of the Atlanta scene to further promote DaFC’s evolution into a culture and entertainment blog.

“The big opportunity for DaFC is that I was born and raised in Atlanta – I know the city better than [national publications such as UrbanDaddy] they do,” Horehled says. “I didn’t just hire some writers [and create a publication]. I think the UrbanDaddy’s of the world will do nothing but benefit DaFC , however, because they condition Atlantans to look to these alternative news sources. It’s a very encouraging city, for sure, with the music and entertainment scene.”

For my part, I certainly hope Horehled is able to transform DaFC into the culture and entertainment source she envisions for it – and, as she’s unquestionably a pioneer in the world of blogging, I don’t doubt she’ll accomplish it.

Maybe that’s the best thing about blogging – there are no hard and fast rules, especially if you’re an innovative leader of the pack. If you’re willing to gas it up and treat it right, your blog – like the biggest, strongest car – will take you anywhere you wanna go. Don’t settle for nothing less, dear blogger.

HOREHLED’S FAVORITE BLOGS

Apartment Therapy
Brian Oberkirch
Brooklyn Vegan
Captain’s Dead
Daytrotter
Force of Good
Gapers Block
Garance Doré
Indexed
Kung Fu Grippe
Lifehacker
NOTCOT
Said the Gramophone
The Sartorialist
A Softer World
{this is glamorous}
Wooster Collective

HOREHLED’S FAVORITE ATLANTA/ATHENS/DECATUR-BASED BLOGS:

Andy 2000
Arjan Writes
Asian Cajuns
Burn Away
Cable and Tweed
Dead Journalist
Fresh Loaf
inDECATUR
Inside the Perimeter
Thought Marker
Running with Tweezers

P.S.: If you’d like to be featured in our ‘Bloggers We Love’ series (or you’d like to nominate your favorite local blogger(s) for inclusion), we’d love to hear from you! Simply send an email to esther[at]outside[dot]in.