Focus: “context aggregation” and reporting of regional news; info categories include news, politics, arts, features, entertainment, food, business, offbeat, events calendar, newspaper front pages

Started: June 2008

Staff: launched by Ken Hawkins; 3 staff writers, about 20 contributors

Funding: Company is run by Giant Hawk LLC, founded by Mr. Hawkins and Christopher Giganti; first round of venture capital funding came in October 2009 from Palmetto Investments & Exchange Group; advertising accepted

Site: thedigitel.com

From About

There’s plenty of great Charleston content out there, but it’s ever harder to find — Charleston’s TheDigitel is the only place to get linked to the best Charleston content and events.

…

As an unconventional local media portal, we often receive inquires as to just what we — and our aims — are. In a nutshell our aim is: To not re-report, but to act as concierge, connecting folks to the best in local coverage.

There’s plenty of great local content out on the Web, but it’s coming from an ever increasing number of content publishers — TheDigitel is the only place to get linked to the best Charleston content and events.

Our five points

• Focus on connecting people to the best, most interesting stories about the region, offer a minimum of context, and excerpt a minimum amount, and do so only when absolutley necessary. We do it to be fair to content creators and fair to readers, who shouldn’t have to read something twice.
• Offer helpful context, analysis, and background as we know it. This is done in large part by avoiding news voice.
• Offer links to related stories and sources, and offer connections to added resources like maps, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Wikipedia, and so on.
• Offer a clean, easy-to-use design that acts as a transparent information access tool.
• Be an open and transparent community portal with an ecosystem that allows for community members to tell what they know.

Sample Stories: links to “Bishop England senior takes on Alex Trebek” a story by local print news Post and Courier; “Andre Bauer running for governor”; “It’s official! Boeing coming to North Charleston” a round-up of articles on the matter linking to Post and Courier and the Seattle Times.

Media Mention: MediaShift: “TheDigitel.com Brings Human Element to News Aggregation” article