The three partners behind Grosse Pointe Today are ready to launch the new online news site all the way to the 1950s, and that's a good thing.
Local long-time journalists Ben Burns, Nancy Nall Derringer and Sheila Young Tomkowiak want to take the webzine back to a time when new sources were locally owned, operated and focused. To them, that's the 1950s before corporate greed started to erode the quality and effectiveness of community newspapers.
The fledgling website (started in April) hopes to parlay that local-centric philosophy into a non-profit business model that will allow it to become what local newspapers used to be to the community. That includes offering space for wedding announcements and obituaries for free.
"We think we will become the definitive information source for the Grosse Pointes and the east side of Detroit," says Ben Burns, publisher of Grosse Pointe Today and former executive editor of The Detroit News.
Right now that includes a lot of people working sans paycheck, to start. The three partners, advertising staff, 15-20 professional journalists and another 15-20 interns all contribute to the publication. The long-term goal is to establish the website enough to pay everyone the same way that the quickly-disappearing local community newspapers used to.
Burns hopes to establish the website within the next year or two and look toward expansion when it has reached a sustainable level. So far, it's off to a good start.
"We're getting more hits on our site now than we expected," Burns says.
Source: Ben Burns, publisher of Grosse Pointe Today
Writer: Jon Zemke
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