DCist Goes Pro

Ever since we first launched in Sept. 2004, we've gotten plenty of questions about exactly how DCist works. What started as a volunteer staff of half a dozen writers has, over the last 2 and a half years, ballooned into a collective of over 30 dedicated bloggers who do what they can in their spare time to discuss important local issues and highlight the best cultural offerings of our fine city. At one point last year, we started making enough from advertising revenue to pay a few of the editors a small stipend that essentially covered our bar tabs. But always, those of us who put together this site on a daily basis have been employed at full-time desk jobs, squeezing out content at night, sending frantic emails in the early morning hours, and typing furiously during our lunch breaks. That changes today.

Well, technically it changed at the beginning of April. Regular readers may have noticed that we started posting a lot more content on a daily basis last month, and that was thanks to us being able to hire our News Editor, Lindsay Gibson, to devote her days to writing for the site for four weeks. She did an amazing job, and I'd like to personally thank her for stepping up to the plate.

If you'll forgive me for indulging in a little inside baseball, and in the interest of transparency, the big news for us today is that GothamistLLC has hired me to run DCist in a full-time position. It's been in the works for many months, but I have finally finished up my former day job and today, I'm officially a professional blogger. It is an unbelievable honor for me to take the reins in this capacity after brilliant editors like Mike Grass, Rob Goodspeed, Martin Austermuhle and Ryan Avent worked so diligently to make the site what it is today. I am forever grateful for their leadership and dedication to the mission of DCist, and absolutely humbled to hope that I can live up to their high standards and expectations.

What does all this mean for DCist? Not that much. We'll still be delivering much the same kind of content, just a little bit more of it and hopefully much more consistently. As you can probably imagine, there were just always days here and there where all of us involved were having a hectic time at work. Whenever you noticed a lull of 2 or more hours without a new post on the site, that was always the reason. All of the rest of our 30+ contributors will still be unpaid, and there's no way I could do this job without them. Our contributors are the lifeblood of DCist.

I am excited though about the opportunity to do a bit more original reporting -- having a day job always meant tracking down sources and finding our own stories was near impossible, and while the demands of editing and posting our regular content will mean they'll be rare, I hope to post a handful of reported stories on DCist in the coming months. We'll be figuring it out as we go, as this is only the start of DCist becoming bigger and better, and as always, if you have suggestions about what kind of content you'd like to see from us, we expect to hear from you.