EDITORS LETTER: Youre Invited To Follow DTOWN As We Jump To SanDiego.com

JANUARY 27, 2010 -- Dear Readers:

It’s my pleasure to inform you that sandiegoDTOWN.com is moving. This Web site is being merged into the much bigger SanDiego.com site. DTOWN will soon be a page on SanDiego.com, and I have been hired to be Editor in Chief of SanDiego.com.

From inception in 2009 until now, I’ve enjoyed writing and editing stories about downtown San Diego for the neighborhood site Heather Back and I started up. We both previously worked at San Diego Magazine (which is not affiliated with SanDiego.com), and resolutely took our print experience to the new media world.

Entering the Wild West of journalism was exhilarating. We found a great host company called Neighborlogs that gave us the framework for sandiegoDTOWN.com. Then we learned how to post stories, size photos, create eBlasts and even found paying advertisers for our site. The ride was bumpy and there was no map, but the journey had begun.

Very soon, everything you may have liked about DTOWN will start showing up on SanDiego.com. That Web site has been in existence since 1993. Bought for $35 back then, you can only imagine what a “geo-domain” like SanDiego.com is worth today.

SanDiego.com has been a profitable venture that served as an information portal for visitors to the city. Now, the direction has been set to serve local information to locals. We’re not aiming to be a breaking-news site. Rather, we’ll evolve into an online version of a lifestyle-oriented city magazine. We’ll cover interesting and off-the-beaten path San Diego stories, as well as business, sports, arts and entertainment and much more.

The new SanDiego.com is already off to a great start. La Jolla-based Mike Sager, a writer at large for Esquire magazine, is writing spirited opinion columns for the site. New York Times contributor Eilene Zimmerman is covering San Diego business. And former San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Welton Jones heads an impressive team of arts reviewers.

The contributor list also already includes Dave Good (The Reader), Ned Randolph (San Diego Magazine) and Brandon Hernandez (Pacific San Diego), and veterans like David Coddon (Union-Tribune’s Night & Day) and Josh Board (The Reader) are about to bring their well-read musings to SanDiego.com.

Thanks for clicking on sandiegoDTOWN.com last year, and opening the eBlasts. As 2010 shows signs of recovery and rejuvenation, you’re invited to stop in often at SanDiego.com for news, musings and insight into the stories and issues that affect life in Greater San Diego.

Sincerely,

Ron Donoho

Editor in Chief

SanDiego.com