After receiving the following email Tip, I approached NYC.is founder Susannah Vila for an interview.
“…a friend of mine who’s a grad student at Columbia University launched a kind of localized New York City version of Digg. Rather than using the editor curator approach — like Huffington Post — all the users of the site are New Yorkers that submit NYC-related stories and vote up and down on them to get them to the front page. The site also allows users to publish their own blog posts into the news stream, so it’s also becoming a place for community journalism:
Anyway, I thought this was neat and interesting because this isn’t your typical VC-funded start-up, but rather a grad school student who’s working on all this stuff from scratch. And I think it’s a cool approach to more localized news. I thought you and your readers might find it interesting.
Thanks for the Tip! Keep them coming. The following interview took place in the form of an email Q&A between Susannah Vila and metaprinter founder Robert Ivan. Enjoy!
RI- Are you studying journalism at Columbia?
SV- I study political science and public policy.
RI- What got you interested in journalism?
SV- I became interested in how people get the information that allows them to be active citizens. I wanted to be a journalist because I wanted to inform and engage people. I want to work towards engaging more people with their government and their communities. I will probably be doing many different types of things with that goal in mind.
RI- Are students still clamoring to get jobs with traditional media outlets?…or is there something new to reach for?
SV- I think it depends on the student, and on the j school they came out of. CUNY and Medill are doing great things to foster innovation and an entrepreneurial attitudes. But while there are indeed many exciting new prospects for journalism in play right now, they do not offer a steady paycheck, so the understandable attitude among a lot of people my age is that they should do whatever they can do to get a full time job.
RI- What do you think of Jose Antonio Vargas leaving the Washington Post?
SV- I do think that it, at least to some extent, reflects larger trends in journalism. HuffPo is constantly innovating and adding new features; it mixes the work of paid, professional bloggers and reporters with unpaid and, not necessarily formally trained, ones. They’re growing while the Washington Post shrinks. And it’s because of this the Vargas will be able to start his own thing from scratch, which is always exciting.
RI- Do you subscribe to a traditional news publication like a newspaper or magazine? If so, which ones?
SV- Yes, I subscribe to The Economist and the New Yorker. Everything else I read online.
RI- Where do you get your news from?
SV- I get all my breaking news from Twitter. I read longer things on nytimes.com, HuffPo, and many more. I also have the WSJ and NYT Iphone apps.
RI- You started NYC.is, Why? What purpose do you find it serving? Or, what is the goal of the site.
SV- The only hubs for aggregating and curating local news in New York when I started making the site were one-sided, top down outlets. This was before the Huffington Post launched its New York vertical. NYC.is will, I hope, become the place to publish, share and rate community, civic and citizen journalism about neighborhoods in the five boroughs. There is no barrier to entry which, in addition to the self-curating aspect, is what sets us apart.
RI- What was your inspiration for the site? It has been described to me as a kind of localized Digg.
SV- Yes, Digg and Reddit are the inspirations. As is Chicago’s TheWIndyCitizen.com
RI- At the end of the day, even the most noble of causes needs to make money. Is there a revenue model? What is it?
SV- Bloggers and independent reporters should be the ones benefiting in ad revenue from a site like mine. I want to help people promote their sites, and also help NYC community organizations to harness the web for more impact. So while I will at some point put some ads up, it’s not my first priority.
I will be offering consultation to people who want to replicate NYC.is in other towns and cities, and that will probably involve some payment depending on how much of my time I devote to it.
RI- Zappos was just sold to Amazon.com for $880million. What is the end game or exit strategy for NYC.is?
SV- The only thing I care about is that a real community forms on the site. I’m so busy trying to make this happen, that I haven’t really thought beyond that.
RI- Metafilter founder Matt Haughey attributes his site’s sustainability to its active community. Baristanet does the same. What is your community participation on nyc.is?
SV- It’s a struggle, since we’re so new. The site is very much an experiment, and the outcomes rest on whether or not New Yorkers think this is a good enough idea to take part in it. It’s a big city, and there are lots of people for me to reach out to, so I am optimistic.
RI- You launched NYC.is recently, (March 2009) I see you have 106 contributors to the site. Are you happy with the growth?
SV- At first (in March) I launched the site only to friends. I didn’t begin the real effort to reach out and spread the word until a few months later. The challenge is less about growth than it is about getting people to remain engaged with the site, returning on a regular basis.
RI- Technorati is tracking 13,945 blogs with NYC content… how do you compete with that?
SV- It’s great to be reminded of how many blogs are in the area—it makes me much more optimistic for our future! I don’t see Technorati as a competitor at all.
RI- Who is your biggest competitor? Do you think you have one?
SV- It depends on how you look at it. If I saw major news outlets like HuffPo and like NBC as competitors, I’d be shaking in my boots. I’d prefer the site to be viewed as more of a facilitator for other blogs and websites. NYC.is can help promote the work of small sites, and it can also help big sites to connect with members of the community it is trying to serve (including newer and lesser known local bloggers).
RI- How are you getting the word out about nyc.is?
SV- Well if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them! Right now we’re just relying on emails to the right people, Twitter, and our (slowly growing!) Facebook group. People have been very receptive.
RI- I suggest you email everyone at this url an invite it’s the aforementioned list of Technorati tracked blogs with NYC content. Also I might enlist some friends to plaster all the highest trafficked subway stops with NYC.is stickers but that would be illegal, so don’t do that. I would put up a forum for members as well. It can’t hurt and it might foster a better sense of community on the site.
RI- Traditional media is going bankrupt in the internet paradigm, it’s my opinion that you must solve the revenue problem before you can solve the sustainable journalism problem… would you agree or disagree?
SV- Disagree, because I don’t it is possible to “solve” the former without also–simultaneously– exploring the latter. You have to try out many different models for producing and distributing good journalism before you can find out what works. And as you do that, you’ll probably discover new ideas about revenue models.
RI- What is the role of the 4th estate in light of communications advances in the internet paradigm?
SV- Generally speaking, changes in the medium don’t necessarily change the role of the press. The Internet may help legacy media institutions better serve the public, but only if they harness it. One way to do this would be to behave receptively to the suggestions of their audience as much as possible, and that’s something that I think is really important.
RI- How will nyc.is compete / partner/ or coexist with Everyblock?
SV- I see people going to the two sites for different reasons…the idea of NYC.is is that it is a front page for the best of each day’s local stories, so I can check back there a few times a day just to see what people are voting on. I see Everyblock as more of a source for specific information. I would go there if I heard about a robbery on my street and I wanted the details. I think people are interested in both the best of their whole community and the news from the ten blocks on either side of their home. As to how they could collaborate, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
RI- Have you considered adding a “spot.us” feature to your site where readers can fund an endeavor?
SV- Yes, that has definitely been a part of my plan from the beginning. The first phase of the site is to get an active community of voters and sharers, and then to engage a wide swath of New Yorkers who are not necessarily with publishing their own stories about their communities. Depending on the quality of what we end up with in this initiative, I want to set up a model for crowdfunding. Perhaps by this time David Cohn will have released the source code for spot.us and someone will have made a widget for publishers to easily implement crowdfunding. If not, I would contribute towards a Drupal module for that purpose in a heartbeat.
RI- No holds barred cage match: Jay Rosen vs Jeff Jarvis, who wins?
SV- Jeff Jarvis is much feistier.
RI- Is there anything you’d like to ask me?
SV- You are obviously someone who spends a lot of time online and pays close attention to the future of news, but do you regularly share and rate stories on a Digg, Reddit, or equivalent? Be honest.
RI- I rarely post to Digg or Reddit because things like Brittany Spears news will trump anything I put up. I do however post or bookmark regularly to Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter where shared interests are often less nebulous. I also love interacting on ask.metafilter.
Lastly, I read digg and reddit but usually only via Trendalicious where Will Glozer has created a wonderfully simple website trend tracker. I Highly recommend it to anyone who’ looking to see what’s hot NOW.
http://glozer.net/trendy/
RI- Do you own an eReader like a kindle or sony reader? Why do newspapers keep pushing these things?
SV- No. If you grew up reading on a computer screen, why would you need a special, different device? The only people I know who have Kindles and use them to pay for news are my parents and their friends, so while I think that is a fine source of revenue in the short term, I’m not so sure about the long term.
Books, though, are another matter. If I traveled a lot I would get a Kindle to read books on.
RI- Thank You for your time and keep us posted on your progress at NYC.is Readers can also keep up with Susannah via twitter at Twitter.com/SusannahVila
SV- Thanks!
Related posts:
I don’t know, seems like it won’t make money, but it is a new way to find NYC news so that’s cool.
Pingback: Democracity in action: DIYCity and NYC.is «
Bascially in an overcomplicated way, Plimer is asking to show that the modern rise in CO2 is not a feedback from medieval warming. ,