JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

If you go to the website of the Shawnee Mission Post, the first thing you see is a pop-up ad for SoJo Summer Fest — formerly known as Jazz in the Woods — which is having its 27th rendition this weekend at Corporate Woods Founders Park.

Pop-ups can be greatly irritating to readers, but as they go, this one is fairly unobtrusive and, because of the mission and scope of this online newspaper, it is actually as informational as it is irritant.

Most important, that pop-up is eye candy and money in the bank to Jay Senter and Dan Blom, co-publishers of the Shawnee Mission Post.

For Senter and Blom, who produce nearly all the stories for the Post, this is a celebratory week: On Wednesday, they observed the sixth anniversary of their publication’s founding. They also celebrated the fact that, in an era when traditional newspapers are battling to make the transition from print to online and when many online start-ups are experiencing brief life spans, the Shawnee Mission Post is making money and expanding.

Senter’s and Blom’s business strategy has revolved around three elements: being patient and flexible; churning out multiple byline stories every day; and not taking on debt.

“It took us five years to get this business model oiled and running smoothly,” the 36-year-old Senter said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a constant shifting of hats that we do every day.”

Kevin Collison

Senter and Blom raised the stakes significantly in January when they hired their first full-time employee, sales director Jennifer Vanourney, whose background includes 15 years as an ad rep at The Kansas City Star. In recent days, Senter and Blom committed to an equally important full-time hire on the editorial side, nabbing former KC Star development reporter Kevin Collison, who is set to start in mid-August. (Collison will continue doing freelance stories for KCUR-FM 89.3.)

Coinciding with Collison’s start, Senter and Blom will officially launch their second site, the Blue Valley Post. That will extend the Post’s reach from about 95th Street to the southern reaches of Leawood and Overland Park. The new site is already up and running in soft, or “beta,” format. As you might expect, the pop-up for SoJo Summer Fest is the first thing you see on that page, too.

Jay Senter

Senter and Blom expect the Blue Valley Post to be the first of several additional sites, each of which would serve specific parts of Johnson County. The model Senter envisions parallels The Star’s expansion into Johnson County about 20 years ago. Back then, home delivery sales were starting to fall badly in the central city and Wyandotte County but growing in Johnson County. The Star responded by rolling out several “Neighborhood News” publications — stand-alone, tabloid sections that were inserted in weekday editions, once or twice a week. At its peak, The Star was publishing about a dozen targeted neighborhood sections.

Those sections made good money for several years, but they withered in the late 2000s because of the general downturn in the newspaper industry — a situation triggered, of course, by the relentless rise of the Internet.

The Star wasted little time pulling its horns, not only dropping the Neighborhood News publications but also closing its suburban bureaus after decades of success with them.

That left the existing community newspapers — and digital start-ups — to re-seed the suburban landscape. As Collison aptly put it in a phone interview, the digital start-ups, like the Shawnee Mission Post, are “filling in the gaps as the old war horses retreat.”

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Senter and his wife Julia Westhoff, founded their paper as the Prairie Village Post in June 2010. For the couple, Prairie Village was a natural starting point. Not only do they live there but Senter was raised in Prairie Village and graduated from Shawnee Mission East in 1998. Senter has a master’s degree in journalism from KU, and he previously wrote for Yahoo! Sports, the Lawrence Journal-World and KCFreePress.com, among other publications. He also held jobs at the University of Kansas Hospital and the American Academy of Family Physicians before making the Post his full-time endeavor two years ago.

Dan Blom

For the first two years, coverage centered on Prairie Village, Fairway and Mission Hills, with Prairie Village Shopping Center merchants providing most of the initial advertising. In August 2012, Blom came on board as co-publisher. Also a Prairie Village resident, Blom, 66, had previously worked for nearly 30 years at community newspapers in northwest Indiana. With family-owned Howard Publications, Blom worked as a reporter and editor and then on the business side as as operations director, general manager and publisher.

After Blom’s arrival, the two men expanded coverage into Mission, Roeland Park, Merriam, Westwood, Westwood Hills, north Overland Park and north Leawood. Two months ago, the expansion had reached a point where a name change was warranted, and the Shawnee Mission Post was born. The Post’s website is now averaging about 4,000 unique visitors a day, including weekends, when new content is not published.

On deck: the wide open spaces, burgeoning business environment and fertile real-estate-development opportunities of Blue Valley.

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When you go to the “Advertise” tab on the Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley Post websites, the first words you see are: “You’re local. So are we.” With that simple concept and searing focus, Senter and Blom have found a formula that has worked for them so far…From our vast staff at JimmyCSays — where 200 unique visitors marks a good day — congratulations to Senter and Blom on six successful years and best wishes for a prosperous, expansive future.