Ten years ago in Chicago, an ambitious online publication called Gapers Block—after city slang for the post-accident rubbernecking that causes traffic jams—was born. It had a clean, arresting design and a slew of lively content: some of it original and some curated from around the web. It was a refreshing “hey, let’s start a magazine” upstart in a city beset by newspaper buyouts and billionaire publishing moguls. It’s still around today, still a shoestring operation, and as relevant as ever.
Belt editors and Twitter followers got to thinking about other new and nontraditional publications that help define the Rust Belt and came up with this handy list. It includes culture blogs, investigative and long-form journalism sites and a few venerable alternative newspapers.
Did we miss anything (hello, Milwaukee)? Add it to our comments section, and we’ll consider adding it to our definitive list.
Regional Publications
Belt (Cleveland-based)
Rust Belt Almanac (Pittsburgh-based)
Issue Media Group pubs: Freshwater, Model D, High Velocity, Pop City Media, etc.
Garden Rant (Buffalo and beyond)
Detroit:
Chicago
St. Louis
Cleveland
Rochester, N.Y.
Rochester Subway Flint, Mich.
Flint, Mich.
Cincinnati
The “Rochester Subway” link is taking me to “Cool Cleveland” (as is the Cool Cleveland link).
What about “Buffalo Rising” for Buffalo? http://buffalorising.com/
Thanks for catching that–we fixed. And we’ll check out Buffalo Rising.
The Chicagoan — not clear how active they are right now.
Youngstown (shameless plug alert):
Defend Youngstown
http://www.DefendYoungstown.com
News Outlet (Youngstown State):
http://www.thenewsoutlet.org
Silicon Rust Belt – http://siliconrustbelt.com/ – does not fit nicely into your model but I think you should check it out to see where/how it fits in. Disclaimer: I am involved in it.
Midwestern Sustainable Cities Symposium should be on your radar too.
http://www.mscsymposium.com
Thanks for the kind words about Gapers Block! We launched in April of 2003, so we’re actually verging on 12 years and still going strong. Can’t believe it’s been that long.
DNAinfo Chicago! We cover the shit out of Chicago’s ‘hoods and launched in 2012.
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/
🙂
Indianapolis
http://www.urbanindy.com