Getting my business chops together is a slow, painful process, but it’s happening. I’ve been reading about profit-and-loss statements and recently received free (yay!) legal advice on business structures. A summary of what I’ve learned will appear on this blog eventually.
While that’s cooking, I’ve started learning more about my hyperlocal beat and the niche my future online publication might fill. First, the statistical low down:
The neighborhood covers an area of about 1.5 square miles and contains more than 71,000 residents, says the 2000 Census. Sixty-six percent were foreign born and 80 percent speak something other than English at home — and I’m not just talking about Central and South American immigrants speaking Spanish. From personal observation, I’ve seen and heard people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Nepal and Tibet; Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela; Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe; and a smattering from southern China, Thailand, South Korea and The Philippines.
Compare that with the beat my former publication covered: 22,000 people living within one square mile. Most of them were born in the United States, spoke English at home, and were either white or black. That small area and common language made coverage easy, and because most of the foreign-born residents were either Central American or Northeast African, it trimmed the number of international tracks I had to follow for those “local reaction to events back home” stories.
The diversity that makes my new hyperlocal beat so beautiful means I’ll need creative ways to gather, report and distribute the news. Right now, reporting and distribution seem to be the easy parts, as I’ve had some thoughts on that previously. The news-gathering part, on the other hand, will kick my ass.
Brainstorming on how to avoid that ass kicking will occur in the next few posts.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Samantha Decker.
