Venture Puts Chelsea’s Local News Online
As a journalist, Heather Newman is perhaps best known for the technology column she wrote at the Detroit Free Press. Though she left that newspaper last year for a job at the University of Michigan, the Chelsea area resident has found another way to use her journalism skills. This month, she launched an online news site called Chelsea Update, focused on news and information in the town just west of Ann Arbor. In an email interview, we asked Newman to tell us about her new venture.
What got you started down this road? As you were thinking about the possibility of starting this venture, what were the pros and cons in weighing whether you’d actually do it?
I’d been writing for newspapers for almost 20 years when I left to join the marketing staff at the University of Michigan Press (its book publishing division) in December. Working here has been terrific, but I really felt that journalistic itch, so I was looking for something I could do in the evenings and on weekends to keep my hand in. I’ve lived in the Chelsea area for nine years, so I’m naturally nosy about what goes on there, and the only newspaper in the area is a weekly. It seemed like a great place to start. [Full Story]