My Q&A With Marc Odien

 

A: I would describe it sharing your thoughts and experiences about what's going on around you. Hyperlocal can be as small as a block or a street to as big as a town or a region. Writing and sharing thoughts and ideas about what's going on in the community around you and that affects you the most.

 

A:Yes certainly but I think it depends on what they write about and how they write it.  If they are posting stories about their cat then probably not, But if someone went to a town meeting and is writing about what happened there or even what they had for dinner at the new restaurant down the street, there are journalistic qualities in just about anything people write about.  

 

A: We started a  HTML site ,that was mostly linking to funny and interesting things we found around the web for my friends instead of emailing each other every few hours and then the emails getting lost in the shuffle.  In 2004, I decided to do more original blogging about the stories and things I was working at my day job. In 2005, I left my job at a local tv station  and started WNYmedia.net. At the time there were about a dozen excellent blogs talking about local news and politics around town. The idea was to work together tying the best local content from non mainstream sources into one place. From there we had our own little daily news website and it just took off to what it is today.  

 

A: Some of the struggles we still deal with to this day is the lack of a marketing budget, word of mouth, social media and internet advertising can only take you so far. Getting people in Buffalo who are not web savvy to realize that there are a lot of other resources for news and information out there other than the mainstream sources. Keeping up with technology is another.  We are news people not web people, so providing daily content also having to maintain the website has always been a challenge. Early on we had a problem with convincing people that one main site for all things Buffalo related was a good idea. Everyone wanted their own domain, wp blog with their own logos, themes, sidebars, etc... They felt that they would lose their identity if they weren't unique in the way their website looked. Five years later we have all but erased that idea with the bloggers we have maintained over the years i think because we see the greater value in mass. Bloggers can build their social capital more quickly on a site like ours with a professional and unified look rather than trying to do it all alone.

 

A: The quality, humor, honesty and wit of our writers stands out amongst anyone else in Buffalo. The people we have on our site are "locally" famous if you will, which has helped build credibility with readers. People know they are going to  get it like it is on our site, whether it may offend you or not.