Over the weekend, I spent some time in rapidly renovating downtown Greer. As most of you know, Greer is in a kind of Greenville-Spartanburg limbo, being technically in Greenville County, but sprawling out into Spartanburg County. In terms of the spirit of downtown revitalization, there’s an argument to be made that Greer has more in common with Spartanburg than Greenville, with many new small, independent shops.
It got me started thinking about what the geographical limits of the Spark should be. Until recently, I was dead-set on covering only things in Spartanburg County, intentionally excluding towns like Greer. But, the area as a whole seems to be a little underserved when it comes to the alternative media, and I’d hate to cut off a whole base of readers just because of some arbitrary rule.
Since the Spark is meant to serve the readers in Spartanburg first and foremost, I thought I’d open the discussion up to all of you. What do you think about expanding the Spark‘s coverage area to include neighboring counties? This would be across the board — the music listings, the community directory, the bands considered for Listening Party, the newspapers considered for Sparkle City Headlines, etc. — although Spartanburg would still the primary focus of all coverage.
And, if the coverage is expanded, where should the line be drawn for the limits of coverage? Is Saluda or Tryon fair game, for instance?
Let’s hear your thoughts.
Steve Shanafelt
Steve, you’re much more familiar with the geography of the Upstate than I am, but I think you should think of geography in terms of a like-minded community rather than a strict on-the-ground interpretation. As you well know, there are no hard-and-fast boundaries in cyberspace.
Go west, young man. Go east. South. North. Wherever your nose for news leads, and wherever you find a need to be filled.
Thanks for the feedback, Jason. It’s always tricky knowing exactly how much to localize a publication, even one that exists in the digital ether.
For those of you unfamiliar with Jason’s blog, the outstanding Asheville, N.C.-based AshVegas (http://ashvegas.squarespace.com/) it’s well worth a few moments of your time to check out. He’s also the Multimedia Editor over at the Mountain Xpress (www.mountainx.com), and a good many of the ideas for the Spark came out of web-media conversations I’ve had with him.
I am with Jason here as long as don’t forget the rest of Spartanburg county as we delve outwards. I am still trying to get use the the idea that this county is as large as it is geographically, much less containing 10 times the population of my old home county.
Do we need to restrict our news to just our county? No I don’t think so. But I think our priority should be for local relevance first then interconnection to other areas second.
But that’s just my opinion.
You know, it seems to me that Spartanburg has always been the red-headed step-child of the Upstate. It’s been frustrating, but….here comes the Spartanburg Spark!
I love the “Spartanburg Matters” button to the right as I type. I love the focus on Spartanburg….it’s been so under-rated for so many years.
With that being said, of course the Spartanburg Spark shouldn’t limit itself to the boundaries of the county or city limits. As long as Spartanburg continues to Matter.
Thanks for all you’re doing Steve!!!
I have to say, I kind of like the idea of the Spark being just a Spartanburg thing, but I do understand the need from a practical point of view to expand to surrounding areas.
Greer has always been a bit of a paradox. The downtown area feels more akin to Spartanburg, but the people, especially the newer arrivals, seem to be more like Greenville suburbanites. Tryon wouldn’t be so bad to cover though. A lot of people who live there work down here, and they come here for entertainment a pretty good bit too. I guess the best approach would be to take it all on a case by case basis.
As far as covering Greenville, I’m against it. I think Spartanburg has far too many Greenville enviers as it is. Which I think is a mistake. Greenville isn’t so much a community as it is a large collection of shops (mostly chains), bars (mostly lacking character), and bland yuppie street festivals. Not to say that there aren’t some great places in Greenville like the Handlebar, Coffee Underground, etc, but that’s how the area as a whole feels to me. Frankly I’m tired of so many people here wanting to imitate that.
Spartanburg needs to be Spartanburg. It’s ok to take ideas from other places, but we must be ourselves. So far, I think we’re doing a pretty good job of that. If we do need a role model, I think our friends up the hill in your old stomping ground of Asheville would make a much better one than Greenville.
Didn’t mean to get off on a tangent there, it just sort of happened.
A summary of what I’ve been hearing is that we want to be open-hearted and share our cookie with others, but we want to stay perfectly clear that the cookie is ours to share.
My concern is, is the cookie big enough to share yet? (i.e. in trying to be inclusive will the Spark spread itself too thin and underserve our home county?) As the publication gets bigger and stronger it almost feels like a natural progression that the geographic coverage, readership (and contributorship!) will expand as well.
I hear Cafe Mundo is cool. That’s in Greer. They have open mic stand up on Tuesday nights. I considered doing some stand up there, then I realized that I’m not funny. So… screw everybody else viva la Spartanburg!
Thus far, I’m not hearing a lot of opposition to the idea.
Don’t worry: It’s the SPARTANBURG Spark first and foremost. Greenville doesn’t really need what I’m providing, but Greer might just benefit from a little boost.
It’s our cookie, but I don’t see any reason that Greer can’t have a bite.
Also: Cafe Mondo is pretty cool. I was just out there earlier today. The guy who runs it is a wealth of information about the area, and they appear to be one of Greer’s few live music venues. That’s awesome.
Isn’t part of Greer in Spartanburg County now? I think it’s fine to include Greer coverage, but if you do you should also cover Gaffney. If you get your hands on an old Spartanburg County map, you’ll see that Spartanburg County originally included Gaffney and the Cowpens battle site. In the 1890′s parts of Spartanburg, Union, and York counties were sliced off and merged to form Cherokee County and Gaffney made its county seat. That is why the city of Spartanburg, which was originally located as nearly as was practical to the center of Spartanburg County, now appears on maps as off-center.
Haskell: Good suggestions. Downtown Greer, as I understand it, is just on the other side of the Greenville County line, but that’s kind of a lame reason for me not to include it in the Spark’s coverage. Gaffney is another good example of a nearby community that might worth covering.
Are there any other cities or towns that we should consider for coverage that are currently being overlooked?
Well, I agree that geography can be arbitrary or psychological. You mentioned Tryon; I live near Campobello and probably visit Tryon at least once a week. There’s a pub there called Elmo’s that carries the Mountain Express, which I always pick up. And the Tryon Theatre, with the balcony that allows beer, wind, and smoking. Columbus NC is pretty quiet but does have a couple nice restaurants. Saluda is in the same county (Polk), but of course seems much further because of Saluda Grade.
Tryon, Saluda and Columbus could certainly be worth covering. Although the Mountain Xpress does cover that area, it’s of little help to us on the S.C. side, because they don’t distribute here. (They do have a few stops in Greenville with certain advertisers like the Handlebar, but, those are notable exceptions.)
So, speaking tentatively in terms of coverage area, we’re looking at Saluda to the north, Greer on the west, Gaffney (perhaps even Blacksburg) to the east and maybe Laurens or Clinton to the south? If Shelby and Spindale were included, that would be a roughly 30 miles of coverage in each direction from Spartanburg, except for the east, which knocks against Greenville. That seems reasonable to me. Everything on that list is less than an hours drive from Spartanburg, I think, which makes it semi-local.
Other thoughts?
Funny you should mention Spindale, I went there last night to see the Blind Boys of Alabama at Iosthermal Community College, which of course is also home to WNCW 88.7-FM. So yes, I think it would be great if you can cover such a wide area, but of course I’m biased since I live in the northern part of Spartanburg County. I guess ultimately it comes down to what you’re comfortable with and how much time you have.