Ben Burns, the editor and publisher of Grosse Pointe Today, says that the site is performing well since its recent launch.
”…community members like what we are doing and see it as a professional alternative to the local weekly which avoids controversial stories.”
“We continue to be pleased with our modest progress,” says Burns. “We are now incorporated as a non-profit company — Grosse Pointe Today. And our tax man is in the process of filing our application for 501(c)3 status with the Internal Revenue Service.”
The site is approaching 1,000 page views on some days and Burns says the public safety map (using Google mapping tools) is quite popular, as is the regularly changing home page header photo shot by retired Free Press pro Larry Peplin.
The calendar has become quite popular with various groups and agencies as a way to communicate with the public, he added.
Other coverage is also well received. Grosse Pointe’s November election coverage drew praise from the local school board President as he compared it to the local weekly’s efforts. The site ran biographies and position statements on every candidate in every local race, if they submitted them.
Some local funeral home directors are now uploading obituaries on their own and Grosse Pointe’s list of locally recommended service people continues to grow, as does its free classifieds section.
Like many other New Voices sites, Burns notes that Grosse Pointe’s corps of professional volunteers has fallen off from the dozen the site started with, but some semi-professional writers are now contributing. For example, the advisor to one high school student newspaper wrote a travel piece and another freelancer wrote a series of articles on bicycling in Michigan.
“Our student corps, since the first report, has proved outstanding, particularly Lauren Abdel-Razzaq, Isaac Elster, Peter Jurich and Tiffany Kaiser,” says Burns. “We have had approaches from a half dozen other students to work with us [during the] Winter semester.”
Grosse Pointe Today’s managing editor attended the Online Media Association seminars in Ann Arbor and has been working with the students on video projects. Burns says there is also an arrangement with a pair of professional videographers, who provided short clips for each of the Grosse Pointe North and South high school football games and some soccer matches.
On the fundraising front, Grosse Pointe continues to take part in promotional activities of the Chamber of including a Business Exposition that drew a lot of interest.
“We are ramping up our marketing efforts gradually and our GrossePointeToday.com logo appears on the cover of the 12,000 locally distributed Blue Book telephone directories,” writes Burns. They also planned a third ‘wine, beer and munchies’ reception for contributors in mid-Winter.
He also met with the advertising team of the Little Blue Book in early January to launch an advertising push. The Little Blue Book team has promised to devote half a dozen sales staff to the effort, and Associate Publisher Sheila Tomkowiak and Burns will provide a motivational pitch.
The efforts at fundraising have not been without their setbacks. Grosse Pointe’s “Lone Ranger” single ad salesman had to take a temporary paying job so he could continue to support his family.
Burns said that they have been holding off depositing the $10,000 pledged to them by local professionals until they received non-profit status. “The bulk of the money we have received to date has gone toward site development and software development. We hope to spend more on marketing in 2010 and also start paying student and other significant contributors modest amounts for their work.”
Burns says the bottom line thus far is that community members like what they are doing and see it as a professional alternative to the local weekly, which he believes avoids controversial stories.
He added the test would be whether he and his team can convince advertisers, local foundations and citizens to provide ongoing financial support so GrossePointeToday.com can become a sustainable entity.
“We should know the answer to that by the end of our original 18 month time line in October 2010,” says Burns.
