NewCanaanite.com is participating in a survey designed and administered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas.
Expected to take about 10 minutes, the survey does not ask for your name or any identifying information. It’s designed to help understand who reads local news websites such as ours.
The survey will be open for two weeks.
You’ll find more on a ‘Consent Information Statement’ at the start of the survey, and you’ll be redirected back to NewCanaanite.com at the end.
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We hit a milestone recently at New Canaanite—the site turned three last week, on Jan. 31. Here’s our tentative first Tweet, before we had published a single article:
Hello New Canaan
— NewCanaanite.com (@NewCanaanite) January 31, 2014
That was a Friday (Jan. 31, 2014)—two days after AOL sold Patch to a tech-turnaround firm and the company laid off most of us who had worked as editors in the field.
It was a difficult time—most of the journalists I met at Patch had jumped ship from a failing newspapers industry to join in the company’s hugely ambitious online experiment. There seemed little reason to stay in the field of community news.
The NewCanaanite.com office office is at 140 Elm St.
My brother, Terry, suggested that I purchase the URL ‘newcanaanite.com’ and try covering New Canaan as an independent news outfit. I had no business experience, no background in website development, nothing in the way of ad design or sales.
But I reserved the domain and went live with a free, rather awkward WordPress page and starting filling it up with content—mostly from me covering public meetings.
About a week in, something happened that I have never forgotten, and I think of it often when my mind turns to the early-going with NewCanaanite.com.
A fellow ex-Patcher in northern New Jersey arranged for those of us considering post-layoff launches of our own news websites to meet with a young company at Montclair State University that had developed a free WordPress theme for independent publishers that included ad-serving.
It was a big deal to get down there, and I agreed to pick up two other hopeful news publishers (Leslie Yager, who still runs Greenwich Free Press, and Pam Stern, who would launch Inside Rye) along the way.
My car had been snowed into our driveway the day before, and I was cutting it very close shoveling out. When I finally reversed toward the street, I cut the steering wheel too quickly and the front end of my car ended up on a snowbank piled on the sidewalk.
I tried to pull back into the driveway but could get no traction in either direction.
Panicked by the time and the prospect of a long drive to New Jersey, I ran inside and grabbed the only thing I could find that would help me break up the icy snow stuck under my car’s front end: a fire poker.
Outside again, I got onto my stomach under the car and began jabbing at the packed snow inside my tire and under the engine. It was laborious, cold work. My shirt quickly grew sweaty and my hands, already red with the cold, started spotting with blood and scratches as I tried in a frenzy to clear the undercarriage of the car.
It barely registered when a young guy with a brown goatee walked slowly by in the street (the sidewalks weren’t yet cleared after the storm), looking at me.
I must have looked desperate, and I was—now dirtied, breathing hard, bloody, my car half in the road. I had been laid off days before and here I was, with a vague idea of launching a news website in my hometown and somehow making a living out of it, and I couldn’t even get my car out of the driveway for an important information session.
I crawled back under the car, swearing, and then I saw a pair of boots approaching the car. Looking up, I saw it was the same guy who had walked past. He said his name was John and that he had run into the same problem earlier that morning. He held a small, sturdy-looking shovel in his hand, and he bent down on one knee, making quick work of the packed snow.
We worked in tandem for several minutes, me with burgeoning energy as part of this newly formed team—myself and a total stranger—and soon the car was cleared. I threw the fire poker into the back seat and tried to thank him. As I recall, not thinking it would make sense to explain the purpose of the Montclair, N.J. meeting, I explained that I was headed to a “job interview” and that I was deeply, deeply thankful.
John told me “no problem” or something similar, walked off and I never saw him again.
The session in New Jersey was key to New Canaanite—I made contacts, commiserated, took heart and discovered the ‘Blargo’ WordPress theme, which remains the key piece of the website’s design.
Much has happened since then: I was able to quit my side jobs inside of six months to focus entirely on NewCanaanite.com, took a vacation, found an office downtown. We have won awards and become increasingly involved with the town.
I often think about what John did—taking a bit of time out of his own day to help a person who was struggling and whom he didn’t know.
Thanks again, John. And happy third birthday to the New Canaanite.
I like this story Michael. Thanks for sharing it. There are heroes all around us, some are famous and some are just dear, caring people.