West Seattle Blog
Posted by jessdrkn on October 11, 2009
Location: Seattle 
Focus: municipal, neighbhorhood news in West Seattle neighborhoods, including accidents, crime, local information; links to West Seattle bloggers; calendar listings; traffic cams; public forums; collaborates with Seattle Times on community coverage
Started: 2005 as casual community observation blog; 2007, news concentration, began accepting advertising
Staff: 2-person startup - co-publishers Tracy Record, editor, and Patrick Sand, business development director (“the sales guy”); 6 contributing reporters
Funding: advertising
Site: westseattleblog.com
From About
We started this in late 2005 with the intention of it just being a little place where we could spout our observations about what’s happening in our rapidly changing community. In the early months, it was a lot more personal, written first person, with a lot more opinion. Then something unexpected started to happen — we began to hear from West Seattle residents looking for information they couldn’t find anywhere else, particularly during the December 2006 windstorm and ensuing days of powerlessness, when thousands of us were sitting in cold dark homes without any official information on when our electricity would be restored. That was a turning point for us, toward a focus more on community news and information, updated frequently, and throughout 2007, and now on into 2008, that focus intensifies day by day.
Sample stories: “Update: Car hits pole, SW Barton closed west of Westwood Village”; ”Video: Human, canine volunteers finish up new Westcrest feature”; “Next chance to help library supporters fight more budget cuts”
