The Pitch

When we first thought about this, we didn't know exactly how to approach it. But the more we got into it, this is basically what we decided we'd set out to investigate:

There are over six thousand blogs in the naked city, but only some of them take off. In our long-form project, we will ask: What does it take to rise to the top of the blog heap in New York City?

For the typically self-absorbed New Yorker, blogging can simply be a way of chronicling a life of urban glamour and rare sophistication and showcasing it for mass consupmtionconsumption. WheatherWhether anyone will tear themselves away from the big name blogs like www.gawker.com and www.gothamist.com--wihch attract readers and adevrtisingadvertising dollars from across the country and around the world.—is a different story.

The Internet rating company Alexa gives Gawker a traffic rank of 5,804 with 4,677 other sites currently linking to it - for reference, that puts them slightly behind the Tiffany & Co. website, which ranks 5,102. Gothamist ranks 22,593 overall, but 4,323 in the United States. Here at home, Gawker ranks 1,086, but can brag that over 10% of its hits are from other countries – mostly Canada and the UK.

What that tells us is that, while the big media companies scramble to find ways to turn a profit on the Internet, bloggers in New York are doing it – and doing it remarkably well. We are going to find out why.

Former AOL star cum modern blogger Simon Dumenco calls it “The Gawker Effect.” We will talk to him and other big names in the business to figure out what success means to them – the road to ‘greatness,’ the rankings, the traffic, the quality of their blogs – and what they foresee in the future. On the list: Chorie Sicha and Nick Denton of Gawker; Elizabeth Spiers, formerly of Gawker and now The Kicker; Maud Newton whose personal Brooklyn-based blog is all about books; and Jeff Jarvis off BuzzMachine.com

But to get a sense of what it takes, we need to talk to the losers, too. Even at Gawker Media, arguably the king of the New York Blogo-asphere, continued success is as much a matter of cutting bait on a dying site as spotting the next hot one. Indeed, 2006 saw a major shake-up as the company closed two of its least successful blog sites and re-shuffled its leadership.

To understand what all of that means, we’ll turn to people who are experts in the world of new media. We hope to talk to representatives at Alexa, Technorati, and Hitwise to understand what the traffic trends have been at the New York blogs and what the numbers actually mean. Metroblogging will also help smooth the edges; they are a company whose entire purpose is to unite urban bloggers like those in New York. We will also reach out to Dean Sreenivasan and other new media professors who will help us with the bigger picture.


In other words:
Founded in 2002, gakwer.com,“the source for daily Manhattan media
news and gossip”, has gone on to become one of the most popular
user informed web logs in the city, inaugurating the blog as a
legitimate form of mass media.

We will tour competing blogs and ask what they are doing and see how
they are incorporating the “gawker effect” in their own online
publishing ventures.

Over the course of our research, we will be blogging about the experience itself. ... Like here. Check back for more - especially our first interview - down in the East Village, we found Gawker Fame!

- Raleigh-Elizabeth Smith