Site Specific: Baristanet

A Hip, Well-Heeled Hyperlocal Approach In NJ

Baristanet -- launched in 2004 with a $6,000 investment by novelist and former New York Times columnist -- is bringing a coffeehouse, DIY-style of hyperlocal news to its audience of affluent, educated, largely female readers in New Jersey.
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Baristanet was an early comer to the hyperlocal scene, the brainchild of Debbie Galant, a novelist and popular former New Jersey section columnist for The New York Times. Starting with a $6,000 investment and a $15 a month Typepad platform, Galant focused on local coverage filtered through a hip, writerly voice, winning a core audience of affluent, educated, largely female readers (Montclair is jokingly referred to as the Upper West Side of New Jersey).

The site takes its name from a coffeehouse, DIY conceit that runs through its breezy design (“It was originally called the barista of Bloomfield Avenue,” Galant said.) In 2009, the site partnered with an upstart area kids’ site that rebranded as BaristaKids and provided a revenue-sharing vertical, as well as a steady stream of independently generated content. Galant provided a glimpse of Baristanet’s big picture.

Launched: 2004

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Updates: Seven days weekly

Monthly unique visitors (average): 65,000

Content focus: Hyperlocal news for Montclair-Maplewood, N.J., food and lifestyle features, kids, real estate, deals

Geographic focus: Montclair, Maplewood, Bloomfield, Gen Ridge, South and West Orange, N.J.

Target demographic: Highly educated, high income, largely female in their 40s: “Well-heeled and very bourgeois bohemian.”

Annual revenue: “The revenue and expenditures are both in the six digits, and we make a little more than we spend.”

Staff: 15 part-time employees (including Galant)

Most popular features: Food (reviews and listings), local politics, kids section

Primary digital competition: The Montclair Times (a weekly owned by the Bergen Record), Patch, Groupon and Living Social (on the deals front)

What distinguishes Baristanet from the digital competition: “We provide a fun, hip version of local news to a sophisticated audience. I want to take the voice that you would see in Newsweek or New York magazine and bring it to local. Local is as interesting as anything you’ll find in Esquire. That’s how we differentiate ourselves.”

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