G-town Radio receives $7,500 grant to fund Germantown radio projects

Radio isn’t dead and G-town Radio’s Jim Bear would be one of the first to tell you it.

Reverberating from Maplewood Mall in northwest Philadelphia, “the sound of Germantown” is growing. The Internet-only radio station has been building off a recently awarded $7,500 grant from social justice resource Broad and Roses Community Fund.

The money will fund a high school youth radio project, community forums, a series of audio profiles of interesting citizens and a new political talk show based around Germantown policy issues. The organization also hopes to put the finishing touches on a Web site redesign, improve studio space and purchase new audio equipment.

It’s not a lot of money, for sure, but it is proof that the community is interested in G-town, Bear said in a phone interview with Technically Philly.

“It really helped legitimize what we’re doing,” he says. “To have this input from outside resources helped make people feel more confident in what we’re doing.”

Read more

TNT: The state of hyperlocal online news in Philadelphia

Updated: 8/31/09 6:17 p.m., source title

Sarah Lockard should take more walks.

Earlier this summer, the Wayne native was on a long stroll when she decided she should contact Internet craft supply marketplace Etsy about working with AroundMainLine.com, the online magazine startup she launched last fall to cover the famed, ritzy swath of Philadelphia suburbs.

It was on another walk — one amid the crowds of last September spring’s blue-blooded Devon Horse Show — that the former B2B magazine sales executive decided the Main Line needed community coverage online.

Sarah Lockard

Both “epiphanies,” as Lockard called them, seem to have worked out just fine. AroundMainLine.com has partnered with Etsy to profile artisan goods from regional crafts-makers and, while she declined to disclose monthly revenue or funding, her online magazine features weekly content, has a Web designer on staff, photographers on call and a sidebar etched with advertising.

Lockard, 34, boasts that hers was the first for-profit online magazine in the Philadelphia region. But she won’t be the last.

The hyperlocal Web outfit — tied by geography, focused on a niche community and online-only — is meant to be a great wave of the future, seen by MSNBC’s recent purchase of crime and news aggregator EveryBlock, partnerships with online news startups and product launches like Outside.In and Patch.com.

Philadelphia has its first wave of adopters, but their sustainability is far less certain.

Read more

Technically Not Tech: G-town Radio, the Sound of Germantown

G-town Radio is programmed from an office space in the Maplewood Mall in Germantown. Photo courtesy of G-town Radio

In February, residents of Germantown lost two community fixtures when the Journal Register Co. declared bankruptcy and published the final issues of the Germantown Courier and Mount Airy Times Express.

It shouldn’t be a surprise for many who have watched the newspaper industry struggle. Small communities are continuing to hemorrhage vital media coverage.

Consider G-town Radio a band-aid.

In the heart of Germantown in an office space in the Maplewood Mall, Owner and Station Manager Jim Bear broadcasts an eclectic mix of programming on the Internet radio station. And he’s throwing in some civic duty for good measure.

Read more