Introducing a new revamped @NEastPhilly: neighborhood news looks good

neastphilly-screenshot

For more than eight months, NEast Philly, the online hub for Northeast Philadelphia news I introduced back in May, grew to a small, but targeted, 6,000 monthly page views, housed on a free template from WordPress.com.

Finally we have broken free. Yesterday we launched the brand new redesign of our neighborhood news site for the future.

No longer just a forwarding domain, NEastPhilly.com now aims to be the Web portal for content creation, aggregation and dissemination of news, views, information and events happening in Northeast Philadelphia, a middle-class, still print-reliant community. We hope to recapture our traffic numbers from the old site quickly and move far beyond them.

If you’re interested in the geography or another online news startup find a voice, audience and value, grab the RSS feed here.

What’s more, it’ll also be another experiment in establishing a small, self-supporting local news product. Unlike the Technically Philly product I co-founded that is a swing at a high-end, double niche, NEast is a decidedly more modest proposal.

Continue reading Introducing a new revamped @NEastPhilly: neighborhood news looks good

ChristopherWink.com: Independently hosted and spruced up

The older, WordPress.com version of this site.

Well this is overdue.

Exactly 575 days after my first post on this incarnation of ChristopherWink.com, I’ve done a massive redesign. If you’re in a feed reader, come on over and browse.

There is so much left for me to do, though. A lot of usability, design and organization elements remain janky. We’ll get to that. For now, I wanted to get over the big introduction hurdle of the redesign.

Of course, when I say redesign, I mean I switched from a free WordPress.com theme to using a free, self-hosted WordPress theme, but, hey, I’m tweaking this baby up.

It’s a slightly bold step forward.

Continue reading ChristopherWink.com: Independently hosted and spruced up

CityPaper: Million Little Stories on Shirley Boggs

I’ve become something of a fan of the short briefs that CityPaper, a popular alternative-weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, features. Called “Million Little Stories,” they are actually well-written and worth the investment of time, a step away from the dry briefs with which most newspapers fill space.

I have one in this week’s paper — third down.

The story of Shirley Boggs has gotten around, but only because it seems to be such a good one. She’s made a couple appearances in Philly Weekly and the Daily News and most recently in The Temple News.

It’s worth going to Saturday’s event and/or donating a pair of men’s shoes. Call 215-227-5331 or 267-235-0046 to donate or get more information.

Advertising with @TechnicallyPHL and what other Web startups can learn

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Earlier this week, I launched the first profit-end of a business in my entire life — assuming the tax-status gray area of cutting hair and writing term papers for friends doesn’t count.

Technically Philly, a news site covering technology and innovation in Philadelphia that I launched with two friends, began soliciting advertising, the first in a series of monetization strategies — because advertising can’t be king anymore.

In the first four months, we’ve been introducing members of this region’s Web 2.0  and co-working communities, but we have so much ground yet to cover. We’re only now making friends with the bubbling venture capital scene in Philadelphia, and the innovation and technology that is being employed in this region’s rich life sciences and biotech sectors would blow you away. We want to report appropriately and effectively with wisdom and justice, chronicling the heights and depths and direction of this scene and its creative economies.

And that’s just it, for a Web startup, you have to be patient. By most accounts, four months is likely early to launch monetization, but, simply put, the fiscal standing of my two co-founders and I makes it necessary to get the profit structure squared away.

See our media kit for Technically Philly — designed by Brian James Kirk.

There are a host of issues we’re eager to take on, if only just to learn about the real practicalities of entrepreneurial journalism.

Continue reading Advertising with @TechnicallyPHL and what other Web startups can learn

Introducing Technically Philly: covering the Philadelphia technology community

Philadelphia’s technology scene is, well, growing, expanding, maturing, developing, whatever.

There are a host of worlds and working parts to it, different scenes, from Center City, to Old City, to South Philly, to the northwest and West Philly, up to the ‘burbs and, well, in some way, everywhere in between.

The problem is that there is no one home, no one portal, vessel for all of those cultures and news and events and updates.

I think I’ve found it.

With Web designer Sean Blanda and graphic designer Brian James Kirk, I am proud to introduce Technically Philly: covering the community of people using technology in Philadelphia.

Continue reading Introducing Technically Philly: covering the Philadelphia technology community

My Services: Hire me to tell your story

The cover of a book I published with Blurb. Hire me to do something similar for your family.

Hire me to tell your story.

For a birthday, anniversary, wedding or another special event, let me tell your story. I will interview you or your family and compile a commemorative profile, just as it might appear in a newspaper or magazine. If you choose, it can be printed and framed in a variety of styles to your preference. I also could use a publishing service to create a book in a style of your choosing.

Continue reading My Services: Hire me to tell your story

Really, how crowded is the inauguration going to be?

Tomorrow I’ll be in D.C. to cover the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

It seems it’s all anyone is talking about in a way no inaguration in my short life – even the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, another young Washington outsider popular with young people.

Folks in D.C. are already complaining of the growing crowds. There might not be enough public toilets.  I filed a story for CampusProgress.org suggesting this inauguration may not only be the largest, but also might have more college students than ever before (perhaps disinegnous because there are more American college students today than ever).

But will the cold and these calls of crowd drop that total? Check here for details and for updates, check my Twitter account, where I hope to link to photos via Twitpic.

Photo courtesy of RPG.

Disclosures

This is where I will post any potential biases or conflicts of interest. I do not feel the below work or relationships cloud my ethics as a journalist, but transparency is of the utmost importance.

If you have any questions or comments, contact me here. To see a more complete list of my work and professional experiences here.

  • I have contributed to uwishunu.com, an arts and entertainment blog for Philadelphia, that is a product of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corp.
  • I worked with Eugene Martin, a filmmaker and Temple University professor, and he became a mentor of mine from January 2007 onward.
  • I volunteered at the Village of Arts and Humanities in the Fairhill neighborhood of central North Philadelphia from January 2007 to May 2008.
  • I have worked and volunteered in a variety of schools and programs administered by the Philadelphia School District, including, but not limited to, Freire Charter School and the Franklin Learning Center, between January 2005 and My 2008.
  • I reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer from December 2005 to May 2006 and again during summer 2008.
  • I attended Temple University and was involved in a variety of organizations, most notably The Temple News, from August 2004 to May 2008.
  • I have been politically registered as an Independent, affiliated with no political party, since spring 2004, when I first registered to vote.

I have listed the above facts because some may think they could affect my ability to fill my roll as a freelance journalist and blogger here.

On this professional site, I blog about being a young freelance journalist in Philadelphia – with central themes on pitching, writing, researching, networking and happenings in cities everywhere.

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