Maplewood: Center of the Online Hyperlocal Universe

On a per capita basis, Maplewood, population 23,000, may have more locally-focused print and online publications than any other town in the world.  For a couple of hours last night, the entire fiercely competitive, hydra-headed brain trust of what I like to call the Maplewood BlogolopolisTM was gathered in one stylish living room at Les Saisons Inn on Elmwood Avenue.

The panel of speakers was so crowded that some of the panelists had to sit in the front row of the audience. In order of the longevity of their commitment to Maplewood, the print and virtual publications participating were:

Worrall Newspapers, which has published the 110-year-old News-Record of Maplewood and South Orange for more than 40 years, represented by Managing Editor Katherine Paster;

Matters Magazine, “The Voice of Good News,” founded in 1990 as Maplewood Matters and now mailed every two months to every home in Maplewood and South Orange, represented by founder and publisher Karen Duncan;

Maplewood Online, which under founder and director Jamie Ross has been building a thriving and loyal online community since 1997;

The MotherHood Online, currently a web-only continuation of The Motherhood magazine, founded in Maplewood in 2006, represented by publisher Lisa Duggan (who was kind enough to give me a ride home, even though I had not previously heard of her publication);

Maplewoodian.com, a one-person soapbox where Editor & Publisher Senior Editor Joe Strupp “rants” (his word) about local politics and news, founded on New Year’s Eve, 2008;

Patch (hey, that’s what you’re reading now!), a venture-capital backed startup that launched in February 2009 in Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn, represented by Editor-in-Chief Brian Farnham; and

The Local, launched in March by The New York Times to cover Maplewood, South Orange and Millburn, represented by editor Mary Ann Giordano.

The Local may be the newcomer of the bunch, having appeared for the first time just last month, but measured another way, it is the oldest and certainly the largest of the group. The New York Times, founded in 1851, is the “Gray Lady” of American journalism, with $2.9 billion in revenues last year, and now employs more than 1,000 journalists.

One of those journalists is Tina Kelley, a Maplewood resident and reporter for the past decade, who was not present last night because of a long-planned vacation. (Slacker.) Giordano said that after the paper emerged from the cauldron of the presidential election, she and Kelley were tapped for the Times’s hyperlocal experiment by Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman.  “We chose Maplewood because Tina lives here,” she said, and added the neighboring towns of South Orange and Millburn to broaden the base. A separate edition of The Local is based in Brooklyn.

Coincidentally—and as near as I can tell, it really is a coincidence—Patch chose the same three towns as the flagships for what is expected to be a national network of sites. Farnham said that in addition to being geographically close to the emerging company’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, the towns exemplify the kind of cohesive communities where Patch wants to serve as a model for local, “real-time online newspapers.”

Patch is backed in part by former Google executive Tim Armstrong, who last month left Google to become Chairman and CEO of AOL.  (Despite the job change, I’ll always think of Patch as the “Googliath” of the Maplewood BlogolopolisTM, with nearly 20 full-time employees at the mothership in New York.)  The company already has announced a planned expansion into three nearby New Jersey towns – Summit, Westfield and Scotch Plains/Fanwood.

Patch CEO and co-founder Jon Brod schlepped out from Soho for last night’s event, and after chatting with him I can now exclusively report that the company plans to announce additional new Patches next week. Brod said he expects there will be “dozens” of Patches by the end of the year—rapid expansion is a must because of the scale of the organization.

The arrival of the two deep-pocketed competitors has been both exciting and unsettling for the local media establishment.  “My stomach dropped” when I heard about it, said Paster of the News-Record, but she sees the competition as a benefit for the community.  The company now provides much of its local content at LocalSource.com, but intends to stay focused on the print publications.

Ross of Maplewood Online reminded the group that his company is still the biggest kid on the online block. MOL and its smaller sister sites in several neighboring towns had 165,000 visitors in March alone, and they logged an astonishing 3.7 million page views – largely because of the more than 20 extremely active local forums the site runs. MOL is focused on local communities rather than on news, but Ross has started a fledgling news operation called Maplewood Dispatch, drawing on his robust content platform.

Seven local publications with seven different business models. Is there room for all of them?  Which business model will look the strongest in six months, or six years? Giordano of the Times voiced the consensus of the group when she decisively opined, “somehow we’re going to sort it out.”

Maplewood resident Kirk Petersen is an independent writer and PR consultant.  He maintains a blog at http://blog.kirkpetersen.net, where he coined the term “Maplewood BlogolopolisTM,” which he seems to think is a big deal.