Here’s the e-mail, as I received it. I’ve removed any personally identifiable information, but suffice it to say that this person is a professor at  Harvard University with a professional spouse who works full time. They have a four year old and an infant and currently rent in Cambridge. Their short list for towns to move to includes Belmont, Lexington and Newton. Belmont is their first choice, because of its convenience. But, as you can see, they have “reservations.”

Dear Paul,

K——- gave me your email address. We’re in the process of shopping for a house, and we’re very interested in Belmont but have heard some worrying things about the schools. Most of the people I know in Belmont have grown children, so I haven’t been able to get any up-to-date info on this. Would you be willing to have a quick phone chat with me about schools, and living in Belmont generally, sometime?

You can call my cell anytime (617-###-####), or let me know if there’s a convenient time for me to call you.

Thanks in advance!

A—–

I spoke with this person today and will share my thoughts in a subsequent post. But first – to the B2 readership – what would your “elevator pitch” be to this parent who’s looking to make a long term commitment to a town and wants 1) quality schools, 2) a safe community, 3) diversity and 4) location/convenience? (That’s the order I put them in, but I’d bet A’s order would be close to that.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

The story in the Times hits on a few interesting points. One is the explosion of local blogs in the past few years as software like WordPress (which BloggingBelmont uses) makes it easy for folks to set up their own blogs and start covering the world around them. The other is the paradox of local blogging. First, many of the most well known hyperlocal blogs still rely on traditional “mainstream media” outlets for much of their real news content. The other is the paradox of local blogging as a business, to whit: 

“One problem is that the number of readers for each neighborhood-focused news page is inherently small. ‘When you slice further and further down, you get smaller and smaller audiences,’ said Greg Sterling, an analyst who has followed the hyperlocal market for a decade. ‘Advertisers want that kind of targeting, but they also want to reach more people, so there’s a paradox.’”

That’s food for thought. Of course, local bloggers would be wrong to think that newspapers (at least those that are still viable) can’t see the same trends and will just stand still and let themselves be elbowed out. Here in Belmont, Citizen Herald editor Tony Schinella notes that the paper’s parent company CNC is revamping 24 of its properties, including the BCH, in the months ahead. The redesign will affect botht he print edition with a new look, layout, fonts and expanded sections, etc. CNC will be polling its subscribers and BCH will be reaching out to members of the community to act as an advisory committee to help guide the changes. 

And, as BloggingBelmont nears its second anniversary (April 25th), I’ve also got changes planned to broaden the scope of the blog and make it more reflective of Belmont as a whole. These are interesting times, indeed!

The change will be transparent to readers, though there may be some small hiccups in service as we transition to a new hosting provider. Be patient — and here’s looking forward to an exciting Summer and Fall in Belmont!

Paul