DallasBlog.com, launched last month, promotes itself as the “online alternative news and information source for the Greater Dallas area community.”

DallasBlog’s editor is Scott Bennett, a business consultant and former Dallas Morning News columnist who co-founded the blog with Tom Pauken, former chairman of the Texas Republican Party. The blog — which has marketed itself with billboards and other advertising — hopes to have eight to 12 paid staffers and 10,000 visitors per day within the next year.

Media Orchard conducted this e-mail interview with Bennett on Tuesday.

MO: When and how was DallasBlog.com conceived? Who are the primary investors, and was the investment significant?

Bennett: “Significant” is a relative term. It was enough to carry us for a year. The investors prefer not to be named. I am one. Only two live here. They are mostly interested in seeing whether an alternative on-line news and information service can be even marginally profitable.

MO: What other blog or blogs have influenced your approach and business model?

Bennett: None really. We are kind of pioneering I think. We want to be a “public square” where anyone can raise issues or say what is on their mind.

MO: Are there elements of your business model that you believe are unique in the blog world?

Bennett: Maybe the fact we have so many professional journalists involved makes us a little different. We also intend to report news not just comment on it. We just think there should be an alternative voice.

MO: What’s the reception from the community been like so far?

Bennett: Very good. We have been up 3.5 weeks and have had 8,000+ unique visitors with about 1,000 per day coming to visit. We are getting a lot of response posts to our articles so that is reassuring.

MO: I noticed your billboard along the Dallas North Tollway. Are there others?

Bennett: There is one on Central Expressway. There will be others. We have what we call an editorial blog on a couple of issues with one being the Wright Amendment. We have a couple of billboards about that whose purpose was to piggyback on a hot issue. But the traffic has gone from DallasBlog to the Wright Alert site, not the other way around. So that didn’t work out as we hoped. I guess you could say we were too clever by half.

MO: What other advertising and marketing are you doing/planning?

Bennett: We have done print and online. Traffic has increased so they have had some impact. We will do direct mail and email.

MO: There are a fair number of former Dallas Morning News staffers on DallasBlog. Have you heard any competitive rumblings from The Morning News? On the print side, the paper was aggressive in competing against the upstart (and now extinct) A.M. Journal Express.

Bennett: No rumblings. I can’t see how they would see us as competitive. Their Web site already has many blogs and gets about 40 million page views a month. DallasBlog doesn’t hit at their print franchise although some of our bloggers have sure hit at them. As you know I too am a former Dallas Morning News employee (long ago) and consider them the premier regional newspaper in the country. But then, I left of my own accord.

MO: Pegasus News has also made some noise as a potential competitor. How do you compare your approaches and business models?

Bennett: I don’t really know what their business model is. Nor do I know anyone associated with Pegasus. I understand they were going to launch earlier this year and now say they will launch next February. I realize Belo doesn’t think so, but competition is good and there is room for all of us. A good example is D Magazine’s FrontBurner blog. They are very good and very different from us. We probably complement each other more than compete.

MO: What technologies/platforms do you use to support your blog?

Bennett: We actually use a very cheap platform called Squarespace. That probably isn’t a long-term solution.

MO: Where do you hope the blog will be a year from now? What are goals in terms of traffic and revenues?

Bennett: We want to attract around 10,000 visitors per day or about 10 times where we are now. We would hope to be breaking even. We aren’t in this to make money, but we aren’t in it to lose money either.

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