Media Giraffe Project --
Link & reference blog

The co-founder of an Upper Montclair, N.J., local online news blog quotes a survey colleague as saying the Newark, N.J., daily fails to take notice of the blog site's news at its peril. Here's the text of an email Liz
George sent to the Media Giraffe Project on Feb. 1, 2006:

Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 13:07:26 -0500
From: Liz George
<lizbarista@gmail.com>
Subject: Baristanet eats newspapers for
lunch; Baristanet breaks new placeblogging ground

This week, Survey USA, a national polling organization that happens to be in our readership area, conducted three local telephone polls for us using the voice of Baristanet co-owner
Liz George (liz@baristanet.com ) . We released the results of first poll yesterday: we found 4 to 1 opposition to a Glen Ridge N.J. bond ordinance to artificially turf a public park. (Not just an
athletic field, an entire park.)

The poll also allowed respondents to record open-ended answers, which elicited many very moving pleas from senior citizens being pushed out of the community by ever-increasing taxes, which we compiled into an audio story here. Interestingly, the Star Ledger, which wrote about the Glen Ridge turf issue this morning, failed to mention the poll -- even though Baristanet co-owner Debbie Galant, debbie@baristanet.com personally sent the link to writer Phil Read. We wrote about this omission here.

"This is the reason the Star Ledger is having their lunch eaten," says SurveyUSA's Jay Leve (jleve@surveyusa.com ) "The future is being invented at this blog. They're producing the future of the democratic process. The old media can't get out of its own way. The fact that the Star Ledger is paying no attention is the reason we can build its tombstone."

Labels: baristanet, media giraffe