Media

June 7, 2009

Turning a Blog into an Empire, One "-ist" at a Time

Jake Dobkin, the publisher and co-founder of Gothamist, talks about what makes a city sufficiently buzzy to blog, and the limits of hyperlocal journalism.

Joe Horton

Jake Dobkin, the co-founder of the boroughs-based blog Gothamist is a New Yorker to the core; he claims to have spent no more than ten weeks away from the Big Apple in the past thirty years. But as the publisher of the Gothamist LLC network of nine other city blogs in the States and three internationally, few can match his online influence and digital reach.

Gothamist began with the simplest of roots. Back in 2002, Dobkin and Jen Chung, a friend and fellow student at Columbia, realized their back-and-forth on Dobkin's website—often, Dobkin would post interesting links, from within the city and without, and Chung would comment on them—might have a wider audience. In short order, Gothamist's traffic was enough to begin selling ad space and paying the staff and contributors who freelanced scoops and stories. Soon links were accompanied by more original content, including reviews, advice columns, interviews, and events listings. Soon, they expanded their network to include other city-based sites; "–ists" are live domestically in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago, Austin, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle and internationally in Shanghai, London and Toronto.







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Comments

- Media
- posted on Dec 14, 09
Laura

Do you have the "ist" suffix trademarked?

- Media
- posted on Jun 11, 13
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