Reasons and Challenges: Starting a Local Political Website

If you’re one of the fortunate few following me on Twitter, you might have guessed I am up to something. I actually started this new “social media” website probably over two years ago on Ning, but wasn’t ready to promote it, and of course it died like a slug bug in some beer.

To give you a little history, four years ago I purchased a website called Indiana Barrister, but couldn’t stand the domain name. I spoke with my partner in crime Abdul, who is the sole contributor, but he had already been blogging for a while and liked the name. Honestly, I had to Google the word “barrister” to find out what it really meant. It turns out it’s another word for the wonderful term lawyer, which angry people also call Abdul. However, the website didn’t really focus on law, it covered politics and news from Indiana. I bought the domain names IndianaDiscussion.com and IndianaConversation.com, but Abdul wanted to keep the name.

He was up for a second site, so I planned to start up IndianaDiscussion.com on the brand new Ning.com platform. And I eventually did … I even have the header for the original site, but it’s not really worth looking at. So in less than 300 more words, why the heck am I re-starting another website and what challenges will I face?

Indiana Barrister is pretty popular. Based on Abdul’s blog posts, we get a lot of traffic and a ton of comments. In almost five years, we have nearly 24,000 comments and currently receive around 20,000 visitors a month. In 2009, Indiana Barrister was named one the of top political blogs in the country by The Washington Post. It’s a good site to launch off and start something bigger.

The visitors are engaged. Any blog post can get from 10, to 30, to 75 comments … the news Abdul provides definitely gets the community talking. However, their comments are kind of lost in a sea of a lot of comments. I wanted a way for them to feature their great comments; or better yet, be able to add their own blog posts, start discussions, etc.

What Challenges will I Face?

The majority of the visitors leave comments anonymously and do not want to register for a website. Several work for the government, school, police or fire departments and are afraid of possibly losing their job.

The registration asks too many questions for your typical political fan. They don’t want to give their birth date, zip code, or any other information that could possibly link them to their real identity. If they haven’t bothered to register for an anonymous email account, forget about them registering on the website.

A new site with no activity gives visitors no reason to join. We got around 20 people to join with the early announcement, but then it trickled off.

I don’t like taking a stance with politics in public. Ha, this is the best one. I shall never link my name with my political views on the Internet. That’s why I (and probably many others) do not comment on anything political on websites like SmallerIndiana.com (which requires a real name.) If I’m going to get the website going, it would definitely help to take a stance, but then the website appears one-sided which I do not want (at least not from me.)

Abdul already posts daily on Indiana Barrister, so how can I expect him to post more unique news on another website?

Political websites make no money, but I already knew that.

How am I going to face these challenges? Well, we’ll find out on IndianaDiscussion.com … or you can tell me!