Offspring on the way
Brian Lambert’s To The Slaughter, over at Rake, matches up the impending launch of MinnPost.com and The Daily Mole. I think he describes the challenges of both startups quite well. While they don’t necessarily compete against each other, both will be judged on an ability to pull an audience from the operations from which they descend: Joel Kramer, with substantial investment and a stable of well-known journalists, must show that MinnPost.com can go places StarTribune.com cannot or will not go. Steve Perry’s site launches with far less fanfare and funding, and may have a lower bar to clear. But the Daily Mole will likely need to provide content that emerges over CityPages.com, to be judged successful.
MinnPost.com opens to the public on November 8. The Daily Mole is in beta and figures to open its doors soon as well. Both sites will apparently run under a platform provided by Clockwork, although the beta version of Mole has been utilizing Wordpress.