Glen Kirby has been writing the news his whole life, but to say the guy has ink in his blood isn’t quite accurate anymore.
Binary codes, maybe.
The career journalist launched the Southwest Post last fall, a digital-only news site carrying daily news stories he writes and photos taken as he covers the region around Souris, Hartney and Wawanesa.
Now he’s either driving somewhere to a meeting or event, or daily posting a story to the site from his home office near Nesbitt, in the Municipality of Oakland-Wawanesa.
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His goal is to post one new story to the site every day.
“We are focusing on the stories that are important to people in that very specific southwest area and we are delivering it on daily and immediate basis through a very contemporary platform,” he said.
The area is also served by a variety of community newspapers and radio stations plus the Brandon Sun.
He’s staked out an ambitious coverage area for a one-man operation — six municipalities including Sifton, Grasslands, Whitehead, Souris-Glenwood, Oakland-Wawanesa and Cornwallis. About 13,000 people live there.
“I’m on the road a lot,” he said.
The Southwest Post began to take shape in his mind while working for the local paper in Souris. Kirby said he started to think about how news coverage could and should have a wider reach than one community.
“I thought there was more that I could contribute as a journalist back to the region,” he said.
Initially he thought about buying an existing newspaper or starting one on his own. But knowing how rapidly the business environment for newspapers is changing, he decided to go digital only instead.
“It seemed to make the most sense, when I looked at the options available, to efficiently and quickly get information out.”
The number of eyeballs he’s attracting has exceeded his expectations, he said. He now has over 2,600 subscribers getting Southwest Post’s daily news feed for free via email, push notifications over phones and other social media. Average hits to the site are now at about 6,800 a day. On Tuesday, during the blizzard across Westman he had 67,000 from people looking at storm-related coverage.
The website has already surpassed a million hits since it went up, he added.
By his own description, the news outlet remains “definitely an odd duck” among news outlets.
About half of all Manitoba’s community newspapers have substantial online content too but it’s not revenue generating, according to Ken Waddell, president of the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association.
“It’s a very, very small part of their income model,” Waddell said, adding he doesn’t see that changing any time soon either.
“The people who we serve like to have their newspaper in their hands,” he said.
Kirby says the big advantage being digital only, aside from having nothing to print or distribute, is that he can deliver news with the immediacy people now expect.
“People don’t want to wait to get their news anymore,” he said. “And as a journalist, what you want to do every day is get information to people as quickly as you can. An online news organization has great dexterity and speed.”
Kirby said he’s planning to bring someone in this spring to start attracting advertisers.
The Southwest Post is found at www.southwestpost.ca.
