Via the Globe and Mail, a story about my friend and colleague Dave Beers, editor of The Tyee: A site for sore journalists. Excerpt:
When he launched the site in 2003, modelling it on U.S. online site salon.com, Beers was taking a step into the journalistic unknown.
A former chief features editor and columnist at the Vancouver Sun, he thought he was engaging in an interesting experiment, but had few illusions about its potential for longevity. He expected to be wrapping the whole thing up within a year or two.
“The first question was: Would anybody read it?” Beers says, shrugging amiably over lunch a half block from his house in Vancouver's SoMa neighbourhood.
“When you launch a website, the first person who comes along is your mom. She wrote a little comment: ‘Dave, this is a nice project. Good luck.'”
Six years later, The Tyee boasts 250,000 page hits a month. That may be a tiny fraction compared to mainstream media sites, but next to its peers, The Tyee is more than holding its own. The biggest similar site in the United States, minnpost.com reported 200,000 hits a month last year, while Californian site voiceofsandiego.org, “San Diego's non-profit source of local news,” mustered just 18,000 over the same period.
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