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TagsWhat is it about Millburn, New Jersey, that makes the wealthy Essex County suburb so attractive to web-based publishers?
A new web-based publication, patch.com, is planning to launch three hyperlocal websites covering the towns of Millburn, South Orange and Maplewood.
Another web-based publication, thealternativepress.com, which launched earlier this month to serve the Union County wealth-belt towns of Berkeley Heights, New Providence and Summit, has plans to start a site for Millburn in November.
Millburn is already served by nj.com, which as part of its recent redesign, launched an Essex County blog that includes editorial content from the Independent Press, a weekly publication owned by NJN Publishing. (The weekly newspaper chain is owned by the Newhouse family, which also owns The Star-Ledger and nj.com.)
The Ledger also covers Millburn, recently writing about an effort by the citizen-activist group WeLoveMillburn to use YouTube to inform residents about the township's $100 million downtown redevelopment proposal. The Ledger also covers Millburn High School sports, though I'll be the first to admit there's no easy way to select stories only about Millburn on the nj.com website.
TheAlternativePress was created by Michael M. Shapiro, a 32-year old commercial litigation lawyer who lives in New Providence. Shapiro was chairman of the township Democratic Committee until last year. He is also behind the blog, shaptalk.com, where he sounds off about state issues.
After graduating from Rutgers University, Shapiro ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New Brunswick in 1998, losing to James Cahill.
Shapiro started TheAlternativePress as a blog in the Spring of 2006 to cover news in New Providence. In an email interview, Shapiro said he decided to expand it to Summitt and Berkeley Heights in 2007 based on the response of the New Providence site. The web site grew out of the blog.
"Based on strong public support for the site, in early 2008, we decided to turn the blog into New Jersey's first all-online daily newspaper and began hiring freelance reporters and columnists," he said.
Shapiro said the site is doing well, recently tallying 150,000 hits. (Note: this is not unique hits.) The site has a fair number of advertisements from local businesses. A typical square ad (125 px x 125 px) is selling for $175 on its town pages, according to its ad rate card. The site is "becoming the talk of the towns that we cover," he said.
Shapiro appears to do most of the news items himself, though he has a number of columnists to opine on a variety of topics, including restaurants, movies, parenting, seniors, video gaming, real estate, and education.
Shapiro said Millburn was the next logical place to go.
"The residents of Millburn/Short Hills face similar issues and have similar concerns as the residents of Summit, Berkeley Heights, and New Providence," he said. "Millburn/Short Hills is a peer community of our current towns, it is contiguous with Summit, enables us to expand to another County, and is a very wired area."
Shapiro, who said he recently became aware of Patch, believes Millburn can support two hyperlocal websites.
"Millburn currently has two weekly newspapers that have been sustained for many years," Shapiro said. "Competition is healthy and we welcome Patch.com to the area."
Patch bills itself as a "network of independently staffed news and information sites that are each dedicated to a single community." It plans to cover local events, news, or information about services, places, or businesses.
Exactly who is behind Patch is unclear, though they appear to be fairly well funded. The company recently ran an advertisement seeking journalists to run the sites. The salaries aren't listed, but I understand jobs will pay in the $40,000 to $50,000 range.
The job calls for reporting, writing, editing, assigning, taking pictures and video, maintaining an events calendar, maintaining a database of local business listings, getting users involved, and liaising with important community figures. It's unclear whether it also includes selling ads to local businesses.
"We see this as nothing less than the future of online journalism and think this just might be a job you’ll brag about to your grandkids," Patch said in the job listing.
Cotton Delo, a Yale University graduate who worked for the Jersey Journal for about 10 months beginning in July 2006, is the public face of Patch. She declined to answer specific questions about Patch, only saying, "We picked Millburn because we think it's a great community, and we're really excited to be launching there!"
