West St. Paul Reader is expanding. We’re moving beyond the borders and reporting local news from the surrounding communities of Inver Grove Heights, Mendota Heights, South St. Paul, and the West Side.
And before you ask, no, we’re not changing the name.
That’s a lot of work and expense before we’ve even proven it will work. Plus, plenty of newspapers have a city in their name but report beyond that city.
Continue reading Expanding Local NewsI’m wrapping up the annual fall member drive for West St. Paul Reader. Tomorrow is the last day. Whew.
These things are always a ton of work. You oscillate between letdown that no one is signing up and sheer joy when a few people join. There’s also a manic feeling that you have to keep pushing it—you never know what’s going to break through, and you’re afraid of holding something back. It’s wild.
Continue reading Level Up Local NewsLast week the MinnPost, a local independent news site, ran a story about the West St. Paul Reader. I met with writer Lev Gringauz for over an hour, and he put together a detailed account of the Reader.
I’m grateful and flattered for the attention.
Continue reading MinnPost Raves About ReaderSo it’s been a long week. Yeah, there was that whole political tsunami on Sunday. Feels like an eon since then. (And the energy… feels like it’s only ramped up since then, for what it’s worth.) But I’m more talking about locally and my reporting with West St. Paul Reader.
This week we ran seven stories in five days.
Multiple stories that we broke and some exclusives. It’s big stuff like a long-time restaurant leaving and a 115-year-old historic mansion torn down, and what should have been simpler stories like a library renovation—that some how drew the ire of anti-library trolls (BTW, did an update on that story Friday night, because book nerds love library plans!).
It’s been a lot.
Continue reading 7 Stories in 5 DaysFive years ago today I launched West St. Paul Reader with the first-ever post, a recap of a City Council meeting.
That first post really epitomizes the work we do: It’s narrowly focused on what happens in our first-ring suburb. It celebrates what’s happening in the community. It serves as an archive to mark what happened, when, and why. I just spent some time reflecting on that first post five years later.
We’re doing a whole five-year anniversary member drive with an audacious goal of 50 members to mark five years by 5/25. But more than flogging a member drive and trying to bring in new members, today I’m trying to reflect on five years of this work.
Continue reading West St. Paul Reader: Five Year AnniversaryI’m in the midst of a member drive for my local, neighborhood news site, West St. Paul Reader. We do hyper-local news—like City Council, new restaurants in town, and local election coverage. We’re supported by members—neighbors, really (it’s a small suburb)—hence a year-end push to grow our support.
So far it’s a big success. We hit our initial goal last week—25 new or upgraded members—and then hit one of our ongoing goals—200 total members. Now we’re pushing for 225 members and then our big goal of 250 members—when we’ll add coverage of local school board meetings.
Continue reading West St. Paul Reader Member DriveIt’s my birthday. If you’d like to help me celebrate, consider supporting one of my projects and becoming a member of West St. Paul Reader through Patreon.
Back in 2019 I started reporting on local news here in West St. Paul. I attend city council meetings, I find out what’s being built on the corner, I low-key bug people, I interview candidates, I research history, I take a lot of pictures, I try to celebrate the amazing things and people in this town. I can be a very dorky tour guide.
Continue reading Support Local NewsTwo years ago I launched the hyper-local news site West St. Paul Reader. After a few years of getting involved in my local community, starting to write about it here, and then a good several months of writing about City Council, I decided to take it to the next level.
I remember a few months before I pulled the trigger, a friend asked if I’d consider spinning off a site focused on West St. Paul. “No way,” I scoffed.
And here I am. Not only did I launch that site, but it’s working. I was able to get it up and running thanks to the support of 68 people on Kickstarter. Today I’ve got 82 people giving monthly or annual support through Patreon.
That ongoing support really makes this endeavor possible. I spent a lot of time attending City Council meetings, writing stories, taking pictures, and more. I couldn’t do that if I weren’t getting paid. So those folks are making local news happen.
To celebrate, I commissioned a local artist to create an exclusive West St. Paul postcard. It’s available to my Patreon members.
It’s pretty incredible that I’ve been doing local news for two years and that I get to create cool stuff like that postcard.
Thanks to everyone who makes this possible.
Back in May I launched West St. Paul Reader. It’s a hyper local news site focused on my town of West St. Paul. It exists thanks to the generous support of a lot of people, from my initial Kickstarter backers to my current Patreon supporters.
It’s been a wild journey, and I’m very grateful for it.
I’ve been writing about West St. Paul here on my personal blog for a while. I think it started in 2014 when we had a hotly contested mayoral election. And it grew from there. It was always a hobby, but it was taking more and more of my time. I write for a living, so that was kind of a problem. I wanted to do something more official and more sustainable. There were stories I just couldn’t tell because it was a hobby. I wanted to do something more.
But I wasn’t sure if it would work. I’ve had a lot of not-so-great ideas over the years that didn’t go anywhere. So I launched a Kickstarter campaign with some trepidation.
It only took five days to hit the initial goal. And it went up from there. That initial boost literally kickstarted West St. Paul Reader. From that initial support I was able to hire a local designer to create a logo, pay a writer to do a post on local taco joints, and hopefully pay some more writers—because it’s important to pay people for their work.
It’s also important to me that West St. Paul Reader is sustainable. I enjoy doing it, but it’s not a hobby. It’s part of my business. It takes a lot of time away from my regular freelance work—and I’ve got bills to pay.
So I’m incredibly grateful to see the ongoing support grow through Patreon. This is a way to support West St. Paul Reader through monthly payments. In return, it helps keep people informed, there are patron-only updates, and other extras.
When an email notification of a new patron comes through, I’ve pumped my first in the air or run a victory lap around my office. It’s exciting because it means this thing is working.
And that has meant some strange and wonderful things. Such as:
For a total of 83 posts.
So to everyone who has made West St. Paul Reader happen, thank you.
If you want to join the team and support West St. Paul Reader you can become a patron.
Ten years ago today, on July 22, 2004, a little website called Church Marketing Sucks went live. Our very first blog post went up and we’ve been challenging the church to communicate better ever since.
We’re still going strong today, and we’ve been throwing a month-long anniversary celebration for the month of July. After all, you only get to celebrate a 10-year anniversary once. We’ve got giveaways (T-shirts!), discounts and lots of posts exploring whether or not church marketing still sucks. We’re also doing a hangout next week and more is still coming.
It’s kind of incredible to be involved in something like this for so long. I’ve been the editor of Church Marketing Sucks for 10 years. In this day and age few people get to do anything for 10 years, never mind work on a website.
Church Marketing Sucks has out-lasted the fads, lived beyond the hype and been around long enough to become one of the dinosaurs of the Internet age. And hopefully we’ll be around for a while longer. We’ve been debating the question, but I’m convinced that church marketing does still suck. We’ve got work to do to help churches share the greatest story ever told.
Everything we’ve accomplished so far is really thanks to the vision and dedication of Brad Abare and the team of directors, board members and volunteers that make what we do happen. Brad not only had the vision to start this up 10 years ago, but the commitment to see it through and the trust to let someone like me run it.
Any number of things could have derailed us over the years. But I’m incredibly grateful for the dedication that made us a long-standing voice. I’m still humbled and thankful to be doing this, and I hope to be at it for a while longer.
Here’s to more frustration, education and motivation.
