“Turning the page,” wrote David Garber in Anacostia.
“It’s a wrap,” wrote Susan Kennedy from Barry Farms.
“I’m tired, to be fully honest,” wrote Steve Thurston in Arlington County.
These are the familiar farewells that have signaled the end of many neighborhood blogs in the region. In a few reflective paragraphs, the writers abort their missions — citing reasons such as exhaustion, family changes or a move — and wave white flags of defeat.
Of the hundreds of community news bloggers that surfaced in the Washington area since 2006, only a handful have stood the test of time. They are the survivors, the strongest and the fittest, who post regularly to dedicated followers and often break hyper-local news hours before large media outlets reach it. Although there is no formula for blogging success and no way to predict which blogs will flourish and which will fail, there are a few secrets to coming out on top.
“Two words: thick skin,” said Dan Silverman, who writes the popular blog Prince of Petworth. “That keeps you going. I’ve been called a Nazi, a communist, a dictator, a genius. . . . And when I go to sleep at night, I don’t think about the guy that called me a genius.”
Silverman, who started in 2006, also had the advantage of getting in early. It was tough then to find any block-by-block coverage of the changes happening in his neighborhood, he said. As speculation about businesses and elections grew, he started a blog to resolve the rumors.
It began as a casual hobby: Silverman wrote one post a day covering neighborhood news. But things escalated quickly. In 2009, when he found himself working through the night, he quit his job as a consultant with BAE Systems to the Department of Homeland Security and began blogging full time.
“I was lucky, because I was first. I filled a void,” he said. “New bloggers have to differentiate themselves, and that’s tough today, when so many areas are already covered.”
With little competition, advertisers approached Silverman early on. Now, with an average of 35,000 hits a day, he makes enough to pay his bills.
Nikki Peele filled a different void. When she moved from Prince George’s County to Congress Heights in 2007, she saw little balance to news coverage.
“All the information I could find about the area, and really Ward 8 in general, was negative,” she said. “It seemed like the whole story about east of the river was crime and poverty, but I knew that couldn’t be the only narrative.”
Peele, 35, reached out to David Garber, who wrote the now-defunct blog And Now, Anacostia, and he encouraged her to consider blogging. She started to attend community meetings but found she wasn’t always welcome. One night in June 2008, she had an argument with an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner member who Peele said tried to prevent her from getting involved in the neighborhood. Determined, she vowed that night to attend every meeting in Ward 8 over 30 days and blog about each one.
“These meetings were covering public information that was relevant to the community,” she said. “I just figured, I live here. I have a right to know.”
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