Thursday, March 11, 2010

A new Michigan online news service opens in Kzoo land

Booth doesn't relish competition so I'm sure a new online news agency in town has folks scrambling to convince advertisers and financial backers to ease up or back out. It appears the new site is targeting Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Benton Harbor and much of southwest Michigan.

Anyway here's the link to the new site.

Looks like it will be a soft news site, business, arts, that kind of thing. But compared to AnnArbor.com the appearance is much better. Found a few broken links though. Looks like they have some sponsors or ads at the bottom of the page.

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation and Borgess Medical are major players in the Kalamazoo area so this may be a serious attempt at providing a counter to the Gazette. It has a ways to go, however.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This growing company seems to be doing things right. Its sister company Concentrate (Ann Arbor) blows away the acorn (AA.com). Yes, it is focused on softer news and entertainment but does a solid job covering the business community, forming strategic partnerships that help the company grow. Hiring Leisa Thompson as photographer tells me that this SW Mich. site is off to a great start.

Anonymous said...

The sister for Grand Rapids is www.rapidgrowthmedia.com and has a decent following there, even if it does only 'good' news and does a whole lot of aggregating.

Anonymous said...

You might note that former Boothies are employed by this new publication. Good to see them finding work. And it shares some freelancers with the Kalamazoo Gazette. Reports are the Gazette has felt some threat and has begged locals not to support it. Word is it's not really competing for the same stories, though. Its niche is what's going right economically in the region and it leaves the layoff news to the other media. At least that's the model in the other communities this company covers.