Innovation, Newspaper News - Saturday, July 3, 2010 10:30 - 1 Comment

New York Times Ends Publication of ‘The Local’ in New Jersey and Directs its Readers to Baristanet

From the NY Times:

The decision has been made to use the knowledge we have gained from the New Jersey Local and take the experiment in a new and exciting direction. And so today this part of The New York Times hyperlocal experiment has come to an end.

The Times is passing the baton to another site, Baristanet.com. Baristanet is one of the most successful hyperlocal Web sites in the country, and its owners, Debbie Galant and Liz George, both experienced writers and editors, are leaders in the field.

The new and exciting direction of which NYT speaks of is to cease publication… it seems lots of companies these days are trying this new approach to er…business.  Publicly traded NYT shut their experiment down because they couldn’t figure out how to make money with it, plain and simple.  Just looking at the The Local I could say, “where the hell is all the local advertising”?

Thankfully, Galant and George don’t seem to have any problem making money with their local news style.  Their sites content AND advertisements are plentiful and on topic.   A statement from their site follows below. Good luck to them and Happy Newsing.

Press Release from Baristanet

Starting tomorrow, July 1, the place we all call Baristaville gets bigger.

We will begin covering Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange with sites for each town as The New York Times today ends publication of The Local in New Jersey and directs its readers in those three towns to Baristanet.

We’ve served Montclair, Glen Ridge and Bloomfield — towns encompassing about 90,000 people — since 2004. Expanding to Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn will bring Baristanet’s coverage area to 150,000.

“Hyperlocal journalism is constantly evolving, and as The Times continues to investigate this arena, we’ll watch with great interest how our friends at Baristanet advance the cause in Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn,” said Jim Schachter, associate managing editor.

We’re thrilled that the Times has passed their hyperlocal baton to us and we will run with it. First and foremost, we are your local homegrown online community. And to that end, we are bringing these new towns into an expanded “Baristaville” by staying local. Journalist and Maplewood resident Jolie Solomon joins the Baristanet team along with community contributors from Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn.

What does this mean for you dear readers? More to love, we hope, and some new voices as we welcome these towns and new readers into the online community you helped create. Thanks for everything you do to make this site an online news and entertainment destination and a true community. And feel free to say hi and interact with your new neighbors in Baristaville.

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Visit Baristanet.com for more.