The Spartanburg Project: Day -15

Almost exactly two years ago, I decided to move to Spartanburg and start an all-local alternative newspaper centered on building an active, informed and involved community of readers. I believe in the power of local media — print, online, radio, TV, whatever — to become a powerful tool in helping change a city from a loose collection of people, businesses and building into a thriving and unique community. I’ve seen it happen first hand; that slow-building momentum as a culture slowly forms around the people who invest their time, resources and attention into making it become more than the sum of its parts.

And I wanted to make that happen, as soon as humanly possible, in Spartanburg. The plan was to launch an alternative paper and call it the Upstate Spark. It was going to be everything I’d ever wanted in a paper: solid, perspective-filled reporting on local politics and government; area and regional environmental coverage; a comprehensive calendar of events; a complete collection of local music listings; honest writing on local arts, music, literature and culture. It was going to be awesome, and it was going to be free to anyone willing to pick up a copy.

Of course, there was something of a delay. I’ll explain later, but the gist of it is that the whole thing had to be shelved for a year in order to bring a few more of the pieces together, including a stint in senior management at a paper very much like the one I wanted to create. In the process, I began to realize that my vision was horribly out of step with the times.

While it would be horribly premature to join in with the chorus of “Print media is dying” (it’s not, and alt-weeklies are doing great — it’s the chain-owned daily papers that are dropping off like flies), it seemed to be a smart move to start with a web-first model.

After all, I’m new to Spartanburg, I’ve only been here a few months, and I’m barely in a position to give directions to the new Bruggers’ Bagels, much less dole out criticism of downtown planning strategy or have any insight into the local music scene. So, we’re going to start this nice and slow, and we’re going to build this from the ground up.

In just over two weeks, I’ll be launching the first, rough, horribly misleading, online-only version of the Spartanburg Spark. That’s why the count is at negative 15. When it does launch properly, it will probably be not much more than what you see now, but I’ll have had time to build in a few tweaks and create a store of content.

It’ll be a mere ghost of its future self, but it will be a start, which is more than I could have said yesterday, when all I had to show was a domain name and a dream.

So, if you’re into alt-weeklies and community and all that stuff, allow yourself a tiny, tentative spark of excitement — but, seriously, keep your expectations nice and low for a little while. It took two years to get this far, and it could take another five before this is even hinting at its potential.

Thanks,

Steve Shanafelt

Publisher/Editor/Writer/Webmaster/Production Designer … you get the idea

P.S. — If this sounds like the kind of project you’d like to become involved with, drop me an e-mail at publisher [at] upstatespark.com (old e-mail address for the project — one thing at a time, OK?)