Sunday, August 23, 2009

RavennaBlog!

By now most folks in the journalism world are ready to kill themselves. Ad revenues are still down. The internet is filled with folks who want to break news faster than us / want our jobs and tend to murder us in the comments section. But there is one field that seems to be hiring: Seattle neighborhood blogs. Yes, neighborhood blogs. Apparently, the creator of West Seattle Blog makes thousands in ad revenues each month, and both Komo4 and the Seattle PI have already been infected by the neighborhood blogging pandemic. So...what kind of news breaks in neighborhoods? Yesterday, I set out to see for myself...

7am:
Weather is a balmy 76 degrees. It looks like Bagel Oasis is open, and there's some music coming from the Ida Culver retirement home. Wanted to do an "Arts and Culture" feature on the band but realized it was just one woman's very loud gramophone.

10am:
Someone just yelled at a man at Bagel Oasis for taking too long shmearing lox on his poppyseed bagel. Victim described man as a "rude ass" about "five foot seven with dark hair." Decided to investigate by getting a bagel shmear of my own but then gave up after waiting 25 minutes.

11:30am:
BREAKING NEWS:
Someone just drove really, really fast down 70th and 15th. Tried calling the police but they were all "do you have the license plate number?" Am now banned from calling 911 for the year.

11:40am:
Moan / cry heard from the therapy office on 65th and 20th. Went to investigate, but door was locked.

12:00am:
A very self-assured man just walked by wearing a tie-die t-shirt that was clearly too large for his frame. Asked him why he felt so confident wearing something so hideous, but he waved his hands and said "no comment." Could tie into recession-era clothing story. Come back to this later.

12:45am:
Tried to interview a child at the Ravenna Eckstein playground but child's mom ran up and grabbed his arm before I could offer him a candy treat.

3:00pm:
Tried to cobble together a meal at the Whole Foods at Roosevelt Center using only free samples. Was able to eat 6 cheese flakes, 4 cracker slivers, 3 cherries, a crum of a snickerdoodle and a hair of lobster. Potential food lead.

3:01pm:
The man selling "Real Change" kind of looks like my Dad.

3:05pm:
People seem to be snorting mysterious potions at the Herbalist on 65th and 20th. Tried to talk to a man about it but he just told me my posture was bad and asked if I would like to drink some corrective chamomile-based liquid. Potential crime story. Will look into later.

5 comments:

WS said...

Having pretended to be a humor writer for about five minutes in college, when dinosaurs walked the earth, I appreciate this. That said, if you ever REALLY want to give it a try, this isn't what we do to report neighborhood news.

What DO we do, you ask?

You need to go sit in meetings. Lots of them. Design review boards, crime prevention councils, community associations. And sometimes the big shows - city council, county council. Even court hearings, like the one we'll attend in about a week for this 19-year-old who keeps getting caught allegedly breaking into houses.

And bring a handheld video camera. We roll video on some of the above and post clips, albeit slightly shaky ones (the cheap tripod has trouble standing up).

However, yes, we ARE hiring. The people we are paying to report and photograph newsworthy events for our site this weekend include a former P-I reporter, a former community newspaper editor, and a former community newspaper photographer (plus a couple others). So if you personally know any looking-for-work journalists who live in West Seattle, invite 'em to e-mail us, 'cause we've got room for more. The news biz is actually expanding. Just not in the big old creaky institutional way.

josh said...

... and on top of that, neighborhood bloggers still have time in their days to write lengthy commentary responses to just about anything on the internet that vaguely references their site. It's really legitimately phenomenal.

Unknown said...

Sorry, 11:30 am was me. I was really looking forward to lunch buffet at Bengal Tiger!

Unknown said...

Oh God, if I didn't have a small child who constantly demanded my attention, this WOULD BE the way I wrote my blog. LOVE it.

And I agree with Josh. WS should have stopped at "...I appreciate this." You're a class act and the gold standard for what a neighborhood blog should be, WS. Keep it up, but don't lose your sense of humor.

Still chuckling about the spot on bit about the bagel place,

Rebecca
of ravennablog.com

Thea said...

steven, i love you :P