Archive: Around Town

It's hard to believe but this issue marks the Lansing Star Online's fifth anniversary.  Karen and I  published our first issue on July 22, 2005.  The top story was about the Town Board considering a domestic partner policy for employees who are part of same-sex couples. 

Also in that issue were articles about the Triphammer Road reconstruction project being held up, the Town approving the Searles/Conlon Road cell tower, part one of a three part interview with the Lansing High School Athletic Director, girls softball, a school board report, and an article on a $70 million capital project (that eventually died), the library's summer reading program, a review of a new Harry Potter book, and a series of articles on the Rogue's Harbor Inn.

In honor of our anniversary I interviewed myself.  In the interview I reflect on the past and talk about what it has been like to produce a local newspaper every week.

Lansing Star: Why did you start the Lansing Star?

Dan Veaner: I was working from home for a large online publishing company based in Virginia.  Near the end of 2004 they announced that they would no longer have employees who didn't work in one of their offices.  We considered moving to Virginia, and even looked at houses, but we love the community here and wanted to stay.  I also wanted to stay in online publishing, but the opportunities here are limited.  Karen suggested an online newspaper, and I thought she was nuts.  By the time I came around to the idea she thought I was nuts.  Eventually we agreed to try it.

LS: Did you ever think the Lansing Star would last five years?

DV: Actually, it has been my secret goal to last at least five years.  Karen and I followed in the footsteps of Matthew and Aline Shulman, whose Lansing Community News was a beloved part of the community from 1996 through 2000.  They set the bar high for a Lansing newspaper, and I hoped ours would last at least as long as theirs did.  Whether or not we have reached the bar that they set is for readers to decide.  I do know that without Matthew's advice and encouragement when we first started we wouldn't have had nearly as good a product.

When I went to my first Town Board meeting Matthew Shulman had already told then Town Supervisor Steve Farkas what I was up to, and he and the rest of the board was very welcoming.  I think having Matthew's endorsement was a big help for us.

LS: Did you get other advice?

DV: We sought out community and business leaders in Lansing to see what they thought about the idea.  We showed them printouts of the Star, which was online as early as April of 2005, though it had no news in it.  We got great advice on everything from advertisement pricing to how to handle the Obituaries page.

LS: Have you had any surprises?

DV: Many, actually.  An online newspaper is different from a paper one in that we can see what people actually read, rather than having to guess.  I always think people want to read about the hard news.  I think it's cool that I get to talk to elected officials from local Lansing people to county to state and all the way up to U.S. Congressmen.  So I work hard on those stories.

Our top read stories of all time tend to be about restaurants and other lifestyle issues.  The story I did the week before Gimme Coffee opened in Lansing was one of our top-read stories.  I knew the story on Lansing's sex offender law a few years ago was going to be big, because it was shocking to find out that serious, convicted sex offenders live in our community.  But I never expected that, as a rule, lifestyle stories would top 'hard news.'

I guess I am also surprised at how vicious some people can get, even in a small community.  That doesn't come up often, but there have been certain stories that seem to have brought that out in people.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is how little our community responds to interactive elements.  Polls, comments, 'hot or not' (where people get to vote on pictures or stories), message boards (yes, we did have a message board for the first year or two) have been relative flops.  Instead our readers interact in more traditional ways such as letters to the editor.  In this age of Facebook and Twitter I find that somewhat comforting, that our readers choose a more substantial way to interact.  But that doesn't mean I won't try more interactive things.

LS: Do you have a favorite story?

DV: If I had to pick one it would be the one about the four year old boy who saved his mother and their home when their kitchen caught on fire in the middle of the night.  He had just learned what to do in a fire when the fire department came to his Kindergarten class a few days earlier for Fire Prevention Week, and he obviously paid attention.  That was a great story with a great outcome.

I also like writing about the North log cabin.  I don't know why.  I just think it is amazing that a building that old came from literally down the street from where I live, and that the community rallied to save it and reassemble it.  Maybe I have history-envy... my family can't really be traced beyond Ellis Island in the late 19th century.  This cabin was built by hand in my neighborhood in 1791 by a genuine Revolutionary War veteran.

After the first few stories I was contacted by a descendent of the man who built the cabin.  Eventually his family contributed to the effort to reassemble it, and I am hoping he and other family members will come to this year's Lansing Harbor Festival, where the successful completion of the project is going to be celebrated.

My grandmother had an uncanny ability to make just about anyone sound special.  I remember seeing her the day after she had met someone someplace -- she would make them sound fascinating and wonderful.  So I like doing the profiles that show people at their best.  It turns out not to be too hard -- you get them talking about what they are passionate about, and the story writes itself.

LS: How about a least favorite?

DV: Well, I really hate writing editorials.  I try as best as I can to keep my opinions out of the Star.  Nobody is perfect at that, but that's what I try to do.  I can't figure out why anyone would be interested in my opinion, but if you edit a newspaper you have to write editorials.

But I like reporting stories, perhaps, better than writing them.  And I like working with Karen.  She does the sales and marketing side, plus about half of the photography.  She is really good at that, and recently has started selling some of her art photography.

LS: What has changed over the five years?

DV: Every so often I like to change the look of the paper, but we have gotten a lot of feedback about the site where people tell us they like the layout and the logic of how you find things.  I am working on upgrading our technology this summer, but I think the basic feel of the Star will be the same.

It is really based on print newspapers with five sections -- hard news, sports, soft news, entertainment, and business/technology.  The downside for me is that I have to find something to put on each of those pages, even when there isn't something in a particular week.  But people tell us it makes sense because they were brought up with paper newspapers that were laid out that way.

When I build sites for clients (that is the other half of our business) I try to keep that in mind -- building the functionality around the key things they want to accomplish with their Web sites.  Trying to keep the technology from getting in the way of those purposes.  So with myself as a client I am trying to speed up page delivery and simplify the framework, while keeping the navigation that people are saying they like.

LS: What do you see for the Star in its next five years?

DV: We want to expand our coverage.  And we want to expand our revenue.  Those are part of the same strategy.  People want local news, and we do that pretty well, I think. 

In that vein, we have spread out with ithacaWeather.net (our local weather site), IthaCalendar.com (our new Tompkins County events calendar), and IthacaBiz.com (our local business directory).  We have always covered the whole county in our Entertainment and Business/Tech sections, and are slowly expanding Around Town and -- a bit more slowly -- News.

We want to keep the core of what we're doing intact.  We try to let the news speak for itself without injecting our point of view into the news stories, and I think we have accomplished that in most cases.  In a more general sense, I admit I am a bit of a cheerleader for our community.  I've lived in about a half dozen very different communities from big cities to small, and I do think this community is unique and remarkable.  My fear is that New York's infamously high taxes are the biggest threat to that.  This is a great place to live except it is becoming less and less affordable.  People leave when that happens.

LS: Do you think online news is the future of newspapers?

DV: I do.  I also think it is the present.  More people tell me they are getting their news online.  Newsreader programs make it possible to choose your news a la carte, and I get a kick out of the mix of news I get myself with The Lansing Star for local news, CNN, Yahoo, and BBC for world news, and various others for technology and business.  You can subscribe to a number of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from the Star, and can even get one from IthaCalendar.net.  I'm thinking about the possibility of iPhone aps for the Star, though I don't know when I'll have the time to do that.

I've stopped watching television news because a) the content has gotten too wishy-washy, and b) the commercials have gotten way out of hand.  We do have commercials, but they are part of the online landscape and they don't make you wait to get the news you want.  You go straight for that, and you also see our ads.  I think that's the best balance.  I like to open my newsreader and immediately see what important is happening in the world.  Then I can get on with my life.  Newspapers have always offered that, and the immediacy and technology of the Internet bring new dimension to that.  For example, the few times we have posted movies of local events they have been popular.

The bottom line is, I think, that online is what people will want, especially as the technology gets better for reading online content.  I think the iPad and competing new devices are a step in that direction.

LS: Any scoops for next week?

DV: Check out the Star and see for yourself.

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