Posts Tagged "United States"

4
Aug 10

Bloggers We Love: FoodGPS’ Joshua Lurie Talks Food, Drink & LA’s Infinite Possibilities

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General — View Comments

FoodGPS’ Joshua Lurie. Photograph by Gary Leonard.

BLOGGER: Joshua Lurie
FEATURED BLOG: FoodGPS
TWITTER: @FoodGPS

Joshua Lurie is a food blogger. Not because it’s trendy – he’s been at it since 2005 – but because he loves to eat, write and share. Food is all about the people and the stories that are behind it, he says.

There are countless stories to be told about our food and the people who farm, distribute, make, sell, prepare, cook, eat and otherwise influence it. Of course, now that food blogging has exploded across the country, it’s not terribly difficult to find decent, locally-focused food blogs that are telling some of those stories. Still, it’s always a treat to run across a well-written, well-organized hyperlocal blog like Lurie’s FoodGPS, which centers on Los Angeles, CA, the city he now calls home.

Raised just outside of New York City in suburban New Jersey, Lurie says he grew up on “a steady diet of red sauce Italian food, pizza, Americanized Chinese food, burgers and fried chicken.” During his adolescent years, Lurie’s culinary world gradually expanded with each trip his family would take into the City. Still, his training as a foodie (and as a writer) really got underway once he went off to college at Vanderbilt and began spending his summers in LA, where he’d eat adventurously while interning at City Hall and also at film production companies.

“I originally got into TV because I was a tour guide at the studios, [and] part of being a page was being ‘leased out,’ to different production companies on the lot,” Lurie says. “They leased me out to Belisarius Productions and I found out about a writer’s assistant position [that was open]. I never would have imagined writing fiction at all, on TV or otherwise, but that kind of inspired me to start writing, and I eventually pursued [writing as a career].”

Lurie went on to work on television programs such as JAG and NCIS. After launching FoodGPS, taking a food writing course and expanding his network, however, he eventually made the switch to full-time freelance food writer and blogger (I asked him if he missed working in TV. His response? “Not at all.”). I’m thrilled to add him to our Bloggers We Love blog roll, and am happy to share part of our conversation here. I hope you find it as valuable as I did.

What prompted you to launch FoodGPS?

I was originally inspired on December 29, 2004, after an old high school friend and I shared a meal at Per Se [in New York]. We asked for as many courses as they’d serve us, figuring we might not have another opportunity to eat at Per Se. They brought 16-18 courses for each of us, each of them different, and we shared everything. It was such a spectacular meal [that I felt I needed to share it, so] I got on Blogger and created a blog. That was in January 2005. That was my first post – this epic meal at Per Se.

How has the blog changed since then?

It’s been an evolution. [For a while,] I only posted about meals I thought were special. Then, eventually, in 2007, I decided to write restaurant news related to Los Angeles. Then, in early 2009, I created separate pages for drinks and for coffee, and I also started focusing more on the people [behind the food], instead of just providing commentary on food. FoodGPS continues to cover the special meals that I come across both in LA and beyond, but I also do quite a few profiles with [people in the industry], as well as event coverage.

How has blogging influenced your professional life?

I really do think FoodGPS has been great for providing exposure [for me] and I do still put a good amount of time into FoodGPS since it’s my personal brand. As far as having my own brand, it’s one of those few opportunities as a freelance writer [where I get to] control the content and cover what I want to cover, and [that's important to me because] I think that I’m adding unique content to the food blogging universe. There are hundreds of thousands of food blogs at this point. A lot of them fall into the commentary realm. I have some friends [blogging in that realm], and I enjoy many of those [blogs] But, finally, that wasn’t really enough for me [so I decided to do something a little bit different.]

What’s been the most rewarding aspect of local food blogging?

This is actually easy – it’s meeting all sorts of interesting people in the food community – [those who work in] bars or restaurants, or other bloggers. I’ve been able to form all sorts of great relationships and have been able to enjoy [the drinking and dining] experience on a much deeper level than just consumption.

Your profiles are really interesting. Who have been some of your favorites?

John Rivera Sedlar – the Chef/Owner of Rivera in Downtown LA. I didn’t really know much about his history before interviewing him prior to Rivera’s opening, and it’s a restaurant I keep returning to, including last Friday night. He’s an incredibly ambitious chef but he’s also humble and gracious and I think what he’s doing isn’t being done anywhere else. [I've really enjoyed] getting to learn about his approach better.

Another was Aiden Demarest, who was the opening manager at Seven Grand, which was a very influential bar when it opened in Downtown LA. He’s now gone to work [elsewhere], but he has that historic perspective on the downtown cocktail scene, which has really exploded.

Reza Esmaili was another interesting one. He’s President of the Northern California Chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild, and I met with him in San Francisco. Not only is he a bartender, he’s an owner/operator. He’s just taken over a place called Long Bar, and it was interesting hear him lay out what’s important [for that venture]. He has the ability to put together a great cocktail program [at Long Bar], but that wasn’t the priority to start. He’s been working behind the bar and on many other levels, so he’s got a historical perspective on the cocktail scene. There’s more context in his approach, and a personal history [that I found interesting].

What’s the most challenging aspect of local food writing and blogging?

Finding balance. At this stage, my primary income comes from covering restaurants and events, so I basically have to be out every single night. I’m at restaurants 2-3 times a day. I cook very rarely at this stage. I feel like my life has gotten increasingly imbalanced in terms of non-food/drinking related activities. A quiet night at home, being able to cook, is almost unthinkable at this point. That’s been kind of a struggle. Most of the time I’m able to enjoy myself at some level, but I’m certainly [aware of the imbalance]. Exercise is also a priority, and there are days when I have trouble finding the time to do that. Luckily, [I'm fairly young, so this lifestyle] hasn’t taken it’s toll yet, but it’s certainly something I’m conscious of and I need to find a way to address it.

I imagine you’re a pretty adventurous eater. What’s the strangest thing you’ve eaten?

There’s nothing I won’t eat except for maybe some sort of insect. I’ve had Mexican grasshoppers, chapulines, fried with chili, lime and salt. I’ll try just about anything.

The other day I went to dinner at an Indonesian restaurant, and we finished our meal with a big plate of durian. I was traveling in Asia in 2005, and they don’t allow it on public transportation [because of its smell]. I actually like it. It’s kind of custardy– yellow and green– and it’s got some sweetness to it – but it’s massive, too, green and spiky.

In Taiwan, I tried stinky tofu, crumbled. It was pretty funky. It’s hard to get past the smell. But I might try it again.

So, considering all the places you’ve traveled and all the food you’ve eaten, what is it you like most about the LA food scene?

I think what I like about the LA food scene is what I like about Los Angeles: there are infinite possibilities. There’s no limit to the types of cuisines you’ll find. It requires more driving, but that’s OK – as long as the results are interesting.

What advice would you have for someone who’s interested in starting a local food blog?

A bunch of people have told me that they’ve always thought about starting a food blog. My reaction is, ‘Just do it. It’s free. You can start it today. You can write your first post tonight.’ Sometimes people get too wrapped up in making their blog unique, but once they start, they can figure that out later.

P.S. Local bloggers, don’t forget to register your blog here. It’s quick, simple, and will help drive traffic to your blog.
P.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@outside.in

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23
Jul 10

Spartanburg Loses a Blogger We Love: Can You Help?

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General — View Comments

SparkNew2

We were deeply saddened this week when we heard that Spartanburg Spark publisher Steve Shanafelt (a Blogger We Love and, most recently, Outside.in guest blogger) is leaving Spartanburg, SC in the fall to pursue another hyperlocal adventure in another town (we’ll let him tell you about that exciting project himself).

While we’re incredibly excited for Steve and his new endeavor, we’re also worried about what will happen to the Spark after his departure from Spartanburg, an issue he addressed in his ‘Big Idea’ post this week:

Here’s the deal: I’m in town until October, although I’ll increasingly be focusing on non-Spark projects as I get closer to that deadline. While I would love — absolutely love — to hand the project off to the right person or group of people, and to watch it grow, I’d rather end the project completely than hand it off to the wrong group of people. To put it another way, I’d much rather have this be a two-year experiment I can look back and be proud of than to let it become a mockery of itself in the hands of others who don’t understand the mission of the project. Call me the Diogenes of Spartanburg, but I’d rather snuff this lantern’s spark out while it burns true than give it to someone who won’t use the light it gives to illuminate the community. I should also note that money isn’t a factor in this decision, and the Spark isn’t for sale.

Which is where you come in. I’ve had a number of discussions with a variety of people about what should happen to the Spark, and some of those are very much on the table. But none of them are concrete, and most are just as dependent on finding the right person or people to take over the project. But you’re a savvy group of folks, and you know the town. Some of you might be in a place in your lives where you might even be able to take on a project like the Spark, or perhaps you know someone else who is. Maybe you’ve even fantasized about how you’d run the site if you were in charge.

Here is the place to brainstorm about what you’d like to see the Spark become. It’s a non-binding brainstorming session, and while it may influence my decision-making process about the future of the site, ultimately the decision is still mine to make.

The post-Shanafelt future of the Spark certainly is a big idea — and we definitely hope Steve finds someone as awesome as he is to take it over (a tall order, for sure, as Steve is really, truly awesome). Still, knowing how many incredible bloggers there are out there, we know it can be done. We figured the least we could do would be to share this news with you: perhaps you know someone in Spartanburg (or, someone who’d want to move to Spartanburg) who might be interested in helping to shape the future of a vibrant hyperlocal community site?

Please take a few moments to read Steve’s full post, aptly-titled “Big Idea: The Post-Shanafelt Future of the Spartanburg Spark,” and to congratulate Steve and his crew on the Spark’s two-year anniversary, an accomplishment to be celebrated, for sure, regardless of what the future holds.

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12
Jul 10

6 Best Practices for Multi-Author Hyperlocal Blogs (aka Bloggers We Love: Tom Bridge of WeLoveDC.com)

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

BLOGGER: Tom Bridge (& others)

FEATURED BLOG(S): We Love DC

TWITTER: @WeLoveDC

FACEBOOK: We Love DC

FLICKR: We Love DC

Since July is when we commemorate our nation’s independence, it seemed fitting to profile Tom Bridge, one of the founders of We Love DC, which covers life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in our nation’s capital. A multi-author blog founded on July 4, 2008 by a group of disgruntled Metbloggers, We Love DC was purposefully launched on that auspicious date. Bridge and his partners specifically chose Independence Day to turn in their resignations to Metblogs — declaring their own independence, as it were — and strike out on their own.

After about an hour-long phone call with Tom, I came away from our conversation feeling impressed and inspired by the professionalism and dedication of the entire We Love DC team. They have a clear creative vision and they’ve been giving life to that vision day in and day out for the past two years (… except for the weekends, when they take a break!). So, what’s that vision, exactly? While Tom never came out with an official mission statement, I think We Love DC celebrates not only the District of Columbia and its residents, but also the uniqueness and sovereignty of its individual contributors within a collaborative group project (much like the United States, perhaps?).

Having said that, I got to thinking about the challenges and opportunities presented by running a multi-author local blog, and I realized that Tom and his team at We Love DC have a lot to teach us about how to do it well.

1. Build an A+ Team of Rockstar Individuals

We Love DC currently has 24 contributors, each of them selected because they have their own unique editorial point of view and area of expertise. “We want people who are really passionate,” Tom explains. “Foodies, Nats fans, Caps fans – [as a writer], your voice and your obsession put together make an audience. [We Love DC] is home to many voices and many different obsessions, and together they cover all the things we love about this region.”

Not only will your blog benefit from this approach, but your contributors will love you for it and repay you with loyalty and quality content. Big things happen for We Love DC‘s awesome contributors: take their music writer, Michael Darpino, for instance – he got to cover the 9:30 Club’s 30th anniversary concert and received a personal thank-you email from Henry Rollins as a result. Or Jen Larson, who writes the ‘We Love Drinks’ column: she’s started judging serious mixology contests alongside high-level local celebrities and cocktail experts.

2. Keep an Editorial Calendar

I know, I know. Previously I’ve said that keeping and editorial calendar isn’t necessary in order to run a kick-ass hyperlocal blog. I still stand by that statement: you may not need an editorial calendar if you’re blogging solo (or if your partner is your roommate, as is the case with Christy and Morgan, the gals behind Nashvillest). Still, I’ll add a caveat for multi-author blogs with teams numbering in the double digits. In cases like this, organization becomes paramount, and an editorial calendar is a great way to stay on track and preserve your leadership team’s peace of mind. Tom says his team runs their editorial calendar through Basecamp. They also maintain an email list that they use to brainstorm re: story ideas, some of which eventually make it onto the editorial calendar (it also serves as a way for contributors to stay connected to one another, since they’ve all got day jobs).

3. If You Like It, Put a Ring On It

Wait, what was that, Beyonce? OK, I’m not saying you should marry your blog or its contributors, but if you’re serious about making it work, you should definitely consider making it official and seeking incorporation of some form. We Love DC is a Virginia-based LLC because they found that to be the simplest process in terms of the options in their area. I’ll leave the pre-nup discussion for another post (sorry, Kanye).

4. $hare the Wealth

It’s a great idea to offer a profit-sharing plan to your contributors (BTW: I’m no lawyer (sorry, Dad!), but if you plan do to this, it seems smart to make sure you’ve covered #3 first). We Love DC takes profit-sharing to the next level by offering contributors not only a portion of the blog’s proceeds, but also a path to ownership: 7 of the blog’s 24 contributors own a stake in the company. “You should have a path to ownership when you’re part of the staff — we’ve extended ownership to 2 authors [who have been with us for a long time],” Tom says, adding that “you shouldn’t have to work your ass off just to pay somebody else’s bills.”

5. Be Open & Honest with Contributors

From the very beginning, Tom and his co-founders wanted to make sure they were treating their contributors with respect. “We strive to be open and honest with our authorship: bills, traffic, revenue — [all of the data is available] to our writers,” Tom says. “It was absolutely imperative to us [to do this, because] when communication broke down between DC and LA [with Metblogs], that’s when everything really fell apart.”

6. Focus on Friendraising

Forging partnerships with area businesses can be useful for all local bloggers, but this becomes especially useful and important for multi-author blogs with large audiences: for one thing, large-scale events are always better (and easier to pull off) with a little help from your friends. We Love DC thinks big when it comes to partnering with local businesses. “We’ve done huge things with the Kimpton hotel group,” Tom explained. “For instance, we did a survey last year just looking at the demographics of our readership [and those that completed the survey had a chance to win a free dinner and hotel stay from Kimpton]. We’re getting ready to plan our second birthday party, and we hope to partner with them again. Another great partnership we’ve started has been with the 9:30 Club. We do concert ticket giveaways each week– it’s fantastic.”

There are many more nuggets of wisdom I took away from my conversation with Tom, and I’m sure I’ll share those with you in a future post. In the meantime, do you have other tips for people who run multi-author hyperlocal blogs (or those who are interested in starting one)? Please share your wisdom!

P.S. Local bloggers, don’t forget to register your blog here. It’s quick, simple, and will help drive traffic to your blog.
P.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@outside.in

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20
May 10

StarNewsOnline Goes Hyperlocal with Outside.in

Posted by Jared in Announcements / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

Last weekend, we launched MyBackyard with StarNewsOnline of Wilmington, NC.  MyBackyard enables its readers to browse everything from news to real estate to events in dozens of neighborhoods in Wilmington.  Vaughn Hagerty, an enterprising developer at StarNews, leads the project and sings the praises of our hyperlocal platform, Outside.in for Publishers:

MyBackyard requires accurate address-level location information for items in our news feed. In addition, we need to have the option to attach more than one lat/long to a piece of content if necessary. Doing this accurately and consistently really requires a human editor with easy-to-use curation tools. We explored a few options, and Outside.in’s publisher tools fit the requirements nicely. Using them, a single editor can maintain our feeds in about 20 minutes a day.

We’re thrilled to have StarNewsOnline kick off our work with The New York Times Regional News Group and proud to have a product that meets their needs so well.

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13
May 10

Bloggers We Love: Steve Shanafelt

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General — View Comments

BLOGGER: Steve Shanafelt
FEATURED BLOG(S): The Spartanburg Spark
TWITTER: @TheSpark
FACEBOOK: The Spark on Facebook
YOUTUBE: The Spark on YouTube

SPARTANBURGSPARK.COM

What happens when a seasoned media professional moves to a new town and decides to start a hyperlocal blog?

Some pretty amazing things, as it turns out: a community gets its long-anticipated downtown café and somebody finally starts taping the City Council meetings, for example. Those inspiring nuggets are just a few of the reasons we’ve chosen to use this week’s Bloggers We Love post to introduce you to SpartanburgSpark.com (“The Spark”), the hyperlocal blog that writer and editor Steve Shanafelt launched after moving from Asheville, NC to Spartanburg, SC.

Having worked for many years at Asheville’s Mountain Xpress, Shanafelt felt it was time for a new venture in a new town. Spartanburg seemed like the right spot: an agreeable town with a serious dearth of local news and a lack of sufficient opportunities for community members to converge and discuss Spartanburg issues and happenings.

Steve Shanafelt, founder of The Spartanburg Spark

“When we decided to move, Spartanburg was one of these fantastic places— it just seemed to be crying out for some project to stitch it together,” Shanafelt says. “I’m continually surprised by how good that instinct turned out to be.”

COMMUNITY MATTERS

And so, in August 2008, The Spark was born, providing Spartanburg-centric news, as well as online forums, an events calendar, a music calendar, regular podcasts (a new feature that The Spark community has embraced, even though Shanafelt & Co. are unabashedly inexperienced– yet honest, funny and compelling– podcasters), a reader soapbox, a blogroll (SparkleCityBlogs – Spartanburg gets its nickname from a 1950′s rockabilly group) and a curated page of local headlines from other sources, such as local Etsy listings (HubCityHeadlines – Spartanburg is also called the Hub City, because it was once a major regional transportation hub).

Shanafelt borrowed much of his inspiration for the site from Mountain Xpress, whose mission statement charges that the paper exists “to build community and strengthen democracy by serving an active, thoughtful readership at the local level – where the impact of citizen action is greatest.”

As we mentioned above, one way The Spark lives up to this ideal is by filming all Spartanburg City Council meetings and making them available on YouTube, something that was born out of necessity, as the City Council didn’t have the resources to accomplish this itself and, evidently, no local mainstream media source had used its resources to do this, either. It took a blogger to bring the City Council to the people, which further solidifies something we believe to be true: when mainstream media sources no longer have the resources to effectively cover their beats, oftentimes local bloggers step up and fill the gap, providing an invaluable public service to their communities, and one we’re honored to celebrate in our own small way.

Shanafelt doesn’t bring home the bacon via The Spark (rather, he continues to freelance), however he won’t diminish it by calling it a hobby. Instead, he refers to it as a “community project,” which is appropriate, considering his focus has been on the Spartanburg community from the very beginning, and community donations also allow The Spark to pay for itself.

“We started off like every other similar project, with ten people reading, and it’s been a steep progression from there,” Shanafelt says. “We’re now at about 1000 readers per day. What we’re talking about is super local—the City of Spartanburg—and there’s a cap on how many people would ever be interested in that— but we’re trying to make it so those people have access to some information that they care about.”

MAKING AN IMPACT

In a city of fewer than 40,000 residents—even fewer of who live in the downtown area, which is where The Spark focuses—Shanafelt and his collaborators are clearly making an impact, and the response from the Spartanburg community has been overwhelmingly positive thus far.

“One of the things that’s been bizarre – in a good way – is the high level of community support,” Shanafelt says. “I tend to look at Spartanburg as a place that has all this dried grass, and if you strike a match, you can start a fire,” he adds, alluding to the site’s name.

Shanafelt uses many different channels to build community on his site, including social media tools, but for him one of the most exciting initiatives has been a series that runs on Wednesdays, called the Big Idea, wherein Shanafelt suggests ‘big ideas,’ and lets the community run with them.

“It’s like a brainstorming topic,” Shanafelt says. “Like, ‘what if Spartanburg had a dog park?’ Here [in Spartanburg]. That’s a novel idea.”

A few of these Big Ideas have actually been propelled forward by the community and have become realities. For instance, Shanafelt and his collaborators have lobbied for downtown café – which sounds pretty simple, but it’s something that doesn’t exist in downtown Spartanburg. Sure, there’s a Starbucks with Wi-Fi in greater Spartanburg, but it’s not downtown, and it’s not the community hub that Shanafelt and the community have envisioned, either.

“Even though there are colleges here, realtors say that [a downtown café] would never work,” Shanafelt says. “After complaining for several blog posts, someone from within the community decided to start a downtown bakery/café/bookstore, and it’ll be open in a couple of months. I’m sure that people have been talking about a downtown café for longer than we’ve been around, but now [that The Spark exists], there’s a place where the community can talk to itself. People are just excited and appreciative about being able to talk about zoning or any of the topics that we discuss, which is an incredibly rewarding thing. You can write something— and then you can get a flood of reactions over something that’s relatively simple! People in the community have been desperate to talk about these things and have not had that forum before. People in larger cities kind of take that [forum] for granted.”

CONTROVERSY

Of course, this isn’t to say that Shanafelt and his collaborators never face any negative feedback from their readers.

“Spartanburg is a traditionally conservative area with a very strong Libertarian bent– meaning, ‘all government is bad, taxes of any form are bad, spending money on public education is bad,’ – and there’s also a very strong affinity for gun rights,” Shanafelt says. “We wrote an opinion piece questioning the necessity of a bill— now a law— allowing concealed weapon permit holders to bring guns on school property and carry them into bars.”

Shanafelt says that while the opinion piece did garner a lot of disagreement from the community, he’s mostly been struck by how few of these negative incidents have occurred.

“My background is in arts reviews, and I faced a lot more negative or opinionated feedback then. We’re talking about some relatively serious things [on The Spark], but most of the stuff we’re writing about isn’t particularly partisan.”

ENCOURAGING BLOGGERS

Shanafelt says he likes to think of Spartanburg as “an anachronistic movie about the 1990s – a place that’s walking 15 years in the past in a lot of ways, culturally and awareness-wise,” but qualifies this by adding that “South Carolina, you know – it gets sort of dismissed as well, but there are so many astonishing things going on here that are flying under people’s radars. It’s getting better, and part of our job is to foster that.”

To this end, Shanafelt created SparkleCityBlogs, an extensive blogroll of Spartanburg-based blogs. Shanafelt writes a weekly update on the goings-on in the Sparkle City blogosphere, and also looks for ways to encourage passionate Spartanburg residents to start their own blogs.

Still, in spite of his passion for local blogs and community journalism, Shanafelt maintains a realistic view about blogging and about the blog as a platform.

“We’ve certainly gone out of our way to get certain individuals to start [blogging], but we’ve had limited success with that. You can’t sort of force that, somehow. Also, a lot of blogs are boring – but you’ve got to try! You’ve got to give them a chance to shine,” Shanafelt says, adding that blogs have a natural lifespan—which isn’t shameful at all:

“Blogs die for the same reason that any project dies,” Shanafelt says. “Something gets someone mad or passionate about that subject, and eventually people move on.  If someone has a blog that’s passionate for a while, why is that invalid? I wouldn’t want someone to feel obligatory about something they’re not passionate about anymore.”

For our part, we hope Shanafelt and his collaborators at The Spark keep on blogging as long as it’s still fun for them—and by the looks of things, that could ensure we’ll be hearing from them for a long time to come. Or, as Shanafelt put it:

“It gives a level of intellectual nourishment to me that people are out here doing this— it’s real, and it’s honest, which is something that’s increasingly rare in the world.”

STEVE SHANAFELT’S TIPS FOR BLOGGERS:

  • JUST DO IT: “Just do it! Just do it! Forget everybody else.”
  • BE YOURSELF: “Don’t worry too much about being professional. We’ve tried to present an image of being more than we are [in the past], and we’ve had much more success [when we’ve been authentic].”
  • DON’T CALL YOURSELF AN EXPERT IF YOU’RE NOT: “A lot of people are trying to present themselves as experts. I don’t think we need experts, we need people.”

    • 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.

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