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Google, Zagat, and Frommers: Where does Charlottesville come in?

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C-VILLE news wire. File photo.

Google announced August 13 that it’s buying travel guide company Frommers, and plans to use the brand to build up its local search results. The search engine giant is already doing just that with content from Zagat, which it bought last year—ratings from the famous review guide will soon be folded into Google listings for restaurants in Charlottesville and around the country.

As Wall Street Journal and New York Times bloggers have pointed out, the $25 million Frommers buy signals a further shift by Google from user-generated content to curated search results created in part by editors working behind the scenes under brand names that carry some weight.

Megan Headley, C-VILLE’s own food and wine editor, is part of that shift. She was hired in April to create what’s likely to be an online-only, Google-search-oriented Zagat guide for our area. Google also tapped local experts to create similar guides in Richmond and Virginia Beach, and is in the process of wrapping up the survey stage of the project (the surveys were supposed to close earlier this month, but Headley says you’ve still got time to fill one out for the Charlottesville guide if you’re interested).

Zagat ratings are already showing up in Google results in major markets (search for Jean Georges in New York and there it is under the map listing, a little maroon 28 out of 30). The partnership with the famous restaurant review guide makes sense, Headley said—Zagat’s ratings are fueled by diner opinions, and Google’s search algorithm is fundamentally democratic.

The marriage with Frommer’s is a little more off the beaten path, and indicates Google is trying to hit on the right blend of information sources in its quest to solidify its status as the go-to place for all knowledge. It’s a formula everybody in media is chasing, Headley said. Google, bloggers, print publications—those with the info are trying to figure out how best to come at readers online, and stay afloat in the process.

Not only are they trying to figure out what people want, and how much and how fast, “but also how to make money on it,” Headley said. “That’s the weird place we are right now.”

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Will Wegmans’ arrival spell trouble for existing groceries?

When Wegmans arrives at the new Fifth Street Station shopping center south of the city in 2015, it could throw two close-by Food Lion stores into competition with the newcomer and each other. Image by Aaron Shrewsbury.

Charlottesville is buzzing about the arrival of a Wegmans grocery store in the planned Fifth Street Station shopping center, which won rezoning approval from the Albemarle County Planning Commission last week. But the chain’s arrival in town could shake up the grocery scene in surrounding neighborhoods, already home to two Food Lion stores.

Riverbend Management, owned by big-time Charlottesville developer Coran Capshaw, confirmed in June that Wegmans would be the anchor tenant in the new 80-acre, $21.7 million shopping center, due to be completed in 2015.

The Rochester-based Wegmans has 80 stores between Virginia and New York, six of them in the Commonwealth. The company is well known for inspiring customer loyalty, and it can point to national ratings that back up its cult status: Consumer Reports named Wegmans the country’s top grocery chain in 2012.

Riverbend’s zoning permit is contingent on the construction of a connector between Fifth Street and Avon Street Extended, parallel roads that head southwest out of town less than half a mile apart. The two are currently joined within the city limits only by Elliott Avenue, but once the new road is completed, the streets and the areas around them—Fry’s Spring and numerous county developments along Fifth; south Belmont and the Monticello High School feeder neighborhoods off Avon—will be more accessible to each other.

But that also means two existing Food Lion stores that serve the separate areas may face the double blow of competition with another chain as well as with each other. One outlet is in the Willoughby Square shopping center off Fifth Street in the city, the other is on Mill Creek Drive off Avon in the county. Though they’re less than a mile away as the crow flies, it currently takes about 10 minutes to drive from one to the other, and both are kept busy by different sets of customers.

Last week, shoppers at the existing stores were unconcerned about possible negative impacts on the local shopping landscape.

Nick Michaels said he’s stuck by his Food Lion on Mill Creek Drive for more than a decade out of convenience. He lives off Route 20 in the county, and has to drive by the store on his daily commute. The novelty of a Wegmans may draw some people in, he said, but he doesn’t think a new connector road will spell doom for the neighboring groceries.

“It’s an alternative,” he said. “But how often do you actually need to get from Avon to Fifth?”

Not far away, Brenda Kolfanty paused on her way out of the Fifth Street store to cheer the arrival of the shopping center.

“It’s about time something came down to this end of town,” she said. Kolfanty works in the city and frequently stays at her daughter’s home in Willoughby, the neighborhood just north of the planned development. She said she’s thrilled to soon have another grocery option, but didn’t think the existing stores would suffer significantly. A big cross-section of residents shop there, she said, but their customer base comes from the lower-income neighborhoods nearby—a group less likely to shell out for groceries at the more upscale Wegmans.

“This place is always busy,” Korfanty said. “That’s just Food Lion.”

Food Lion shares a similarly sunny view. Though the chain’s parent company closed 113 stores nationwide earlier this year, corporate spokeswoman Tenisha Waldo said five local stores, which each employ about 40 people, have recently seen a “brand relaunch” that has gone over well. “While the grocery market in Charlottesville is very competitive, we are pleased with the performance of our stores in the area,” she said.

 

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On Facebook and mea culpas

Notes from the news desk

Usually, the best way to correct a misstep is to talk about it. We found ourself in that position last week, so we’re here to start a conversation—and eat a little crow.

Last week’s story on a dispute over permitted partying in the Market and Meade area included some quotes that it shouldn’t have, quotes that, it turned out, were taken from a private Facebook page.
Our unwritten rule has been to use input from Facebook only if the post is publicly viewable, i.e., only if it’s visible without having to “friend” the person first. And that’s pretty standard for news outlets these days.
But on a busy deadline day, when we were short one news team member, we made a bad call. We saw the posts we ran with only as screen shots, and thought they were public. The poster explained that they weren’t. They were written with privacy settings adjusted so only friends could see them, and they were taken down not long after they went up.
The poster, Victoria Dunham, was understandably upset—I, too, am very careful about social media, especially what’s visible to whom on my Facebook page—and she called us. We had a good conversation about it, talked about the value of revisiting the issue, and decided we should—for several reasons. Chief among them is simply setting the record straight, and letting Victoria respond in her own words, which should have happened before. Here are her thoughts.
“When I contacted Graelyn Brashear regarding the Moto story, I had two major concerns. First, to set the record straight regarding my Facebook comments and the strange journey they took on their way into the media. Second, this: Before a story in our local media reaches the public’s eyes, we need to know that all facts have been checked, and reporters and editors have performed their due diligence. I was personally disappointed and upset regarding the events that had transpired prior to getting this story to press,  and saddened for the general public. The media shouldn’t print anything that’s been thrown over their transom unless those items can be verified first.  In this particular case, verification didn’t happen.To set the story straight, here’s a brief timeline of the events. A neighbor, then a Facebook friend, grabbed screen captures of some comments I had made over the course of a conversation with others. He then cropped and edited the comments, removing the original context and his own angry commentary, and sent the new (his) version to two members of my board and Matteus Frankovich. He included spin on both the meaning of the comments and whom he felt were the intended targets. Shortly thereafter, one of the recipients then sent the edited comments to the C-VILLE Weekly and Hook, along with additional spin.

“After the neighbor’s outburst on my page, I deleted the post entirely. The post was up for fewer than 2 hours and seen by a limited number of my friends. In printing it, however, this brief blip in time has now become immortal via the marvel of internet searching. The fact that the intent of the neighbor and sender was to harm, has only made matters worse.

“As WMNA president over the past years, I’ve been an unpaid volunteer.  I’m not rather than an elected official or a public figure.  When I took the position, I didn’t agree to give up my privacy. The Woolen Mills has faced many challenges through the years, some of them quite serious. We’ve met them head on and have succeeded for the most part.  My recent resignation as president was primarily driven by my work schedule and resulting lack of time for volunteer activities. My decision to resign preceded the media stories and they did not factor into that process. I’ve been disheartened that the most disputed issue in the Woolen Mills is a nightclub zoning variance rather than increased transit, cut-through traffic, or affordable housing.

“From the moment I contacted Ms Brashear, she has been professional, responsive, and considerate.  In making this an open and transparent conversation, it’s obvious to me that she feels a high degree of responsibility towards her readers as well as the public. The C-VILLE Weekly editorial staff could have chosen to act defensively and circle their wagons. They didn’t, and for that they have earned my respect.”

This is also a good opportunity for us to explore how we use social media, and what’s OK and what isn’t. We realized we needed a stated set of rules: Before quoting somebody’s comment or post, confirm it’s a public statement with our own eyes, give the poster a fair chance to respond, and then use it only if it contributes something significant to the story that we couldn’t get elsewhere.
But the discussion can’t really end there. The way people—reporters, editors, readers—use social media is always shifting and evolving. Ten years ago, Facebook didn’t even exist. Who knows where we’ll be in another decade. Point is, it’s something we should talk about, and often. Would you be upset to see a news outlet take a public comment you made on Facebook and use it in a story? In my last job as a web reporter and editor, I once used a photo and a comment from an 18-year-old convicted arsonist’s Facebook page when I couldn’t reach him any other way, or get a mugshot. Was that an overstep? (His family and friends sure thought so, and I can tell you they weren’t nearly as gracious about it as Victoria was.)
What do you think?
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Crowdfunding site Kickstarter is popular here, but does the model hold up?

Use of the crowdfunding site Kickstarter is booming in Charlottesville, and it’s no wonder. The website was created in 2008 as a low-risk fundraising platform for creative projects, and it’s been embraced with a good deal of success here, where indie-minded artists and musicians—and those willing to shell out a few bucks to support them directly—are thick on the ground.

More than 50 projects started in the Charlottesville area have had successful Kickstarter campaigns. Local band Sons of Bill financed its third album through the site, and other area musicians have followed suit. Singer John Thackston, a UVA fourth year whose Kickstarter campaign footed the bill for his first record, deemed the site “the single most important development in the music industry since magnetic tape.”

But as Kickstarter has grown, some see it facing a kind of mission creep, making the company and observers revisit the question of what defines a creative project—and what’s reasonably enforceable.

Unlike other crowdfunding initiatives, Kickstarter doesn’t offer backers a cut of project revenues. Instead, creators post projects online and offer rewards to entice donors. The better the incentives you offer, the better the odds of reaching your funding goal. Fall short of your goal, and those who pledged won’t get charged, and you won’t see a dime.

The model has proved popular—and successful. Since its launch, Kickstarter users have funded 26,000 projects. Two Kickstarter-funded films have received Oscar nods, and site-funded art exhibits have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and the prestigious Whitney Biennial.

Still, backing a project is always a gamble, because creators aren’t obligated to complete their projects as promised. Kickstarter spokesman Justin Kazmark said most people organizing campaigns do follow through when they get funded, largely because there’s a good deal of accountability in small, creative networks. “A lot of times the backers are actually people the creator knows—friends, family, fans,” he said. “It takes a lot of work to get fans and maintain friendships, and you don’t want to burn those bridges.”

Local photographer Peter Krebs used Kickstarter to fund his exhibit Monticello Road, which debuted at The Bridge PAI in April. Krebs wanted his photographs to be “completely accessible to everyone—far beyond the usual suspects who go to openings.” He explained, “Everything was either free or pay-what-you-can. Yet it all cost money.” That’s where Kickstarter came in.

“I wanted to find a way to fundraise that was completely optional and that would allow people with little means to make small contributions and have it be really meaningful,” Krebs said. “The whole thing is about community, and this allowed really wide participation.”

Crowdfunding liberates artists from the traditionally sales-driven art world, said Krebs, who praised Kickstarter for “taking the whole selling business out of the equation.”

But some are seeing serious profit potential in the model. While Kickstarter doesn’t allow people to request money for general support—“fund my paycheck” pitches get pulled down from the site—businesses are increasingly using the site to boost sales and launch new products. Here in Charlottesville, clothing company Robert Redd launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise nearly $300,000 to fund a new T-shirt line. Director of operations Todd Campbell explained, “We’ve been mulling different ways to finally launch our ladies’ offerings, and Kickstarter crowdfunding is really catching on right now.”

Connecting with consumers is crucial, and crowdfunding could help bridge the producer-consumer divide. “It gives your customers an opportunity to validate what you’re doing and give their input at each step,” Campbell said. In e-mails promoting the campaign, the company called on people to “support Robert Redd’s growth.”

But the approach didn’t appear to be paying off for the company. With a little more than a day left for pledges, the project had still garnered less than $20,000.

The growth in use by those pushing business ventures has also opened the door to flops, and even scams. People looking to fund tech projects have raked in millions for their inventions—even though many lack the know-how to turn their wild ideas into tangible products.

Take Seattle company “Eyez” for example. Last year, the would-be creators of video-recording glasses earned a whopping $343,415, meeting their goal, but the backers have yet to receive finished products, and many fear the creators have abandoned the project altogether.

Who’s to stop them? No one, it seems. Kickstarter can’t take legal action, and since the average donation is small, few backers have a big enough stake to sue the project’s creators.

So are companies twisting Kickstarter’s original mission by painting purely profit-driven projects as creative exercises? And does the chance for scams make the business model suspect?

No and no, says Kickstarter. According to Kazmark, there’s room for everyone. “Kickstarter is in some ways arts patronage,” he said. “In some ways it’s commerce.”

And though Kickstarter employees aren’t scouring the site for scammers, Kickstarter users act as their own police force.

“You’re not on something like eBay where it might be one-to-one, and in order for something bad to happen, you just have to pull the wool over one person’s eyes,” Kazmark said. “On Kickstarter, there’s a lot of people looking at the projects, making sure they are who they say they are.”

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Common Ground kickstarts fundraising campaign with sit-a-thon

When the Jefferson School City Center opens its doors in January, nine nonprofit tenants with overlapping missions in health and education will share the responsibility of making good on the City’s $5.8 million equity investment in the project. Most of them—like the Jefferson Area Board on Aging (JABA) and Piedmont Virginia Community College—have long track records in the community, but Common Ground Healing Arts is a brand new initiative, aimed at providing broad community access to therapeutic health care through yoga, acupuncture, massage, and meditation.

On Saturday, July 14, Common Ground will host a “sit-a-thon” at the Haven’s sanctuary as part of a fundraising campaign aimed at securing the remaining $80,000 of the $185,000 the organization needs to outfit its space at the Jefferson School. Pat Coffey, senior teacher at Insight Meditation Community and leader of a regular Tuesday night program at JABA, will conduct a two-hour vipassana meditation workshop in return for a donation.

“The goal is twofold: to raise awareness for Common Ground and just have that positive energy focused on the project when everyone gets together and sits in solidarity to say, ‘We support this idea in the community,’” said Common Ground Executive Director Kate Hallahan Zuckerman. “And there’s the fundraising aspect as well.”

Zuckerman, co-founder of the Charlottesville Yoga School, is the driving force behind Common Ground, which is an outgrowth of the Guerilla Yoga Project, a nonprofit she started in early 2009 that offered sliding scale payment for yoga classes as the recession set in.
“I started thinking if my friends, my peers, can’t afford to come to class, how many other people can’t afford it at a time when healing arts practices can be really beneficial?” Zuckerman said. “When stress levels are high, that’s when self care is the last thing people think about and when it’s most important.”

Guerilla Yoga held 15 classes per week at its height, harnessing the talents of yoga instructors from a wide range of practices and traditions. The group added massage and acupuncture to its menu and organized regular free outreach sessions in Southwood Mobile Home Park, Friendship Court Apartments, and Fluvanna Women’s Correctional facility.

The work caught the attention of JABA CEO Gordon Walker, who then helped Zuckerman set up a weekly 20-minute chair massage program at Westhaven Apartments, a major public housing development in the Starr Hill neighborhood. Walker also helped Zuckerman get in touch with the board at the Jefferson School Community Partnership, which was looking for health- and education-focused nonprofits to fill the 80,000 sq. ft. building whose anchor tenants include the African American Heritage Center and the City-run Carver Recreation Center.

“One of the constant themes that kept coming up was how to make this a lifelong learning center, one that can benefit people of all generations,” Walker said. “While learning about the history and culture of the African American community is a main theme to the school, it’s also exposing people to other kinds of things in the community. And Common Ground will bring these treatment modalities that people often don’t have exposure to.”

Dr. Greg Gelburd serves as an advisor to Common Ground board, and his medical practice, Downtown Family Health Care, is located directly across from Friendship Court. Gelburd routinely prescribes acupuncture and massage as complementary treatment methods for conditions like insomnia, hypertension, allergies, and stomach issues—but not all his patients can afford it.

“It’s outside the realm of insurance coverage in this state and in most states in the East, so it’s pricey for people out of pocket,” Gelburd said.

Gelburd believes Common Ground’s location in the Jefferson School alongside Martha Jefferson Hospital’s community outreach clinic will send the broader message that alternative treatments need to be included in mainstream community health initiatives focused on chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity.

Martin Burks, former president of the Jefferson School Community Partnership, and current chairman of the Jefferson School Foundation, is a longstanding business leader in the Starr Hill neighborhood at the J.F. Bell Funeral Home on Sixth Street. Burks said Common Ground will add a new dimension to the center’s range of offerings.

“The approach was that we wanted to excite old and young people. To attract people with a diverse approach to things,” Burks said. “And I think we’ve done that with a broad array of nonprofits offering services there, and I think Common Ground fits perfectly.”

Zuckerman doesn’t feel the need to soft pedal her project. She’s motivated and ambitious and believes yoga, massage, and acupuncture are for everyone.

“Our stated mission is to bring sliding scale healing arts services to the community. A larger vision we have though is that through this avenue people are going to come into contact with people they wouldn’t otherwise come into contact with,” she said. “My ultimate vision is that I’ll have someone from Farmington and someone from Friendship Court and they’re both on their yoga mats and they’re both in my class.”