A note from Matt Bartel announces that MNspeak and TheRake.com have been combined under the name SecretsoftheCity.com, a tagline long used for The Rake. While the comment-based content of MNspeak gets the center column of the home page, little of Sorgatz’s work remains (not even the name; I’d think there’d be brand equity in MNspeak). And, since few design or functionality upgrades were made after the sale, that’s probably a good thing.

The content — articles like we used to get from the print version of The Rake, along with the kind of quirky rapid-fire one- or two-line blog entries we grew to love at MNspeak — should be far more robust, and the crisp design calls attention to the content more than to itself. While a few tech glitches remain to be worked out, it’s a change for the better.

One thing that’s unclear: Max Sparber‘s byline hasn’t yet appeared. I’ve got messages in to the publication to find out if he’ll be part of unearthing said secrets of the city. Max Sparber remains the editor of “Today’s Talk.”

Update: Erica at Fresh.mn has more.

Sorgatz, now an executive producer for MSNBC.com in Seattle and a contributing editor at Wired magazine, said he sold the name and the MNspeak code in a five-figure deal. With Buzz.mn, the could’ve-been buyer of the site, still in its early days with high-profile blogger James Lileks at the helm and MNspeak pondering a redesign, Sorgatz took part in an email exchange about what makes a good community site, his verdict on the online work of Lileks and Bartel and his recent attempts at creating an exciting “small media mentality” within a “big media company.”

Paul Schmelzer: Rex, you created MNspeak in April 2005 and sold it in January 2006. At that point, how popular was it? Were the Bartels the only interested party?

Rex Sorgatz:  MNspeak was doing well — something like 10,000 unique users per day. I talked to a several other media companies about it — City Pages was going through a rough moment, MPR wasn’t interested. It really came down to the Star-Tribune and the Bartels at the end. The Strib was just getting into the idea of diversifying their brand with these other online properties (which would eventually become Vita.mn, Buzz.mn, and whatever else they launch), so MNspeak was actually a good fit in that sense for them. Ultimately, the Bartels moved faster and seemed to have more of a plan for keeping it running.

Schmelzer: You were at the fore of the “placeblogging” movement — intensely local community blogging. What do you think makes a good community blog? And given your own thoughts on the matter, what’s your assessment of James Lileks and how he’s running Buzz.mn?

Sorgatz:  Starting MNspeak, I began with a set of principles of what a community blog needs to succeed: unique features, a network of engaged people, a decent design, a flexible platform, and so on. It wasn’t until I moved away from Minneapolis that I realized all of those attributes represent the bare minimum. I realized later that a community blog actually works a lot like any other publication — it needs one characteristic more than anything else: voice. It’s really not that different from when I used to work on magazines: a handful of people set the general tone which then organically aggregates similarly- minded people.

This might sound contrary to how we usually formulate “community” — as a collection of diverse voices. But every community needs some common ground, some guidelines that subliminally frame how conversation works. For better or worse, community is not everyone — it is a defined group. Community is, by definition, a limitation.

And I think that is the primary challenge for Lileks. The guy certainly doesn’t lack voice, but the question is how he turns that voice into a vehicle for people to converse around. I suspect that he will have a hard time with this. For however prescient it was, The Bleat was still a one-way publishing vehicle, essentially a newspaper column moved online. And from what I’ve seen of Buzz.mn, he has had difficulty getting people to talk around events. There are tell-tale signs of this kind of awkwardness — like when the author writes several long paragraphs and then ends it with “What do you think?” or “Discuss.” To my ear, that immediately sounds like someone trained in talking to people rather that with people…

Interview continuesSorgatz: Looking at the online media landscape right now, I see one sector that no one has really figured out: local. There are good publications around every single vertical market imaginable, but there are only a handful of good local blogs. If you follow this industry, you’ve read about some of the attempts at local citizen journalism. American Journalism Review recently had a story about the failure of the more prominent citizen journalism sites. But all of those failures have one common characteristic: they were started by former Big J newspaper people. And that reveals the other quality that is required to make “placeblogging” work: sexiness. It’s a crass way to think of publishing, but it’s an essential quality. City Pages in the early ’90s, The Strib in the early ’80s — these had a certain kind of sexiness. (My definition of sexiness: hot content with a strong voice that leads to people talking about the author and engaging with the publication.) I just don’t know if these new citizen journalism projects will have the sexiness to gain audience. It’s like old media dressed up in new media clothes.

It looks as though a lot of recently unemployed newspaper people are trying to move online. Of course they should, but I worry they won’t create anything that feels fun, that has the vigor and excitement of Facebook, that thinks about itself like Digg, that has a relationship with its audience like Newsvine. I predict they will all make the same mistakes: they will talk to their audience rather than with it, they will view “comments on stories” as their big statement about cracking open journalism, and they will vainly try to move the newspaper model onto the internet. And they will likely fail for not understanding the power of the medium: networked communities creating a collaborative news experience.

Schmelzer: Interesting point. Commenting isn’t the only measure of engagement in the so-called Web 2.0 world. I’m still surprised that newspaper websites are often poor at linkbacks (one of the most basic ways to build traffic and goodwill) and refuse, in some cases, to keep archived material online for extended periods (when I link to an old Minnesota Monitor story, I find myself frustrated that many of the Strib links generate 404 errors). And trying to get a newspaper editor  — or even its ombudsperson — to actually reply to comment? Forget about it.

A few final questions: Given what you’ve said, do you feel MNspeak, your labor of love, ended up in capable hands? Or do you wish the current owner(s) would carry it forward in a different way? (Shorter version: Was MNspeak better when Rex was here?).

Sorgatz: My hopes for any new owner of MNspeak were pretty meager: I wanted someone who a) “got it” and b) wanted to push it in new directions. Matt is of the generation that seems to naturally get it, so I trusted him. And Tom has good instincts and a lot of influence, so I thought that would help the site. Am I happy with the site now? Well, there have been small mistakes along the way, but there were always mistakes in MNspeak — that’s what actually makes the medium fun. It’s like we’re inventing how this whole new platform is supposed to work in real time.

My lingering concern with the site now is actually that they haven’t changed anything (except adding more ads). Another person might find that a relief, but I hoped for more than that — I hoped someone would invest in it, push it in new directions, invent new stuff. I introduced new MNspeak features almost every week, but now there’s very little new development on the site. On the other hand, I’ve heard they’re working on a new design, which makes me happy. And bringing on Max Sparber as editor should help solidify the voice inconsistency.

To be completely honest, I’m just glad the site still exists at all. People still seem to find value in it. I still read it more than makes logical sense, so it must be doing something right.

Schmelzer: And have you made steps to implement SeattleSpeak or WAspeak or whatever the equivalent in your neck of the woods might be? Or — given how often we see your comments ’round these parts — are you holding off until you come back home?

Sorgatz: I’m the biggest pro-Minneapolis propagandist on the West Coast, so I can’t move back!

I’ve been gone for just over a year. It’s now the moment where I need to take everything I’ve learned from big media and small media — and apply it on something new. I’m working on some big projects right now, which you’ll hopefully hear about in the next couple months. Some of this might happen under the auspices of a big dot-com or it might happen independently.

I’ve been working on an epitaph for my dozen years working in media. Here it is:

“Big Media Is Hard.”

Epitaph or bumper sticker? I’m not sure, but it’s so true. Building small little sites is so rewarding because you can build an entire new universe in a month. But getting a big media company to change directions is ridiculously frustrating. Big media is hard! But big media is also influential, interesting, powerful, gargantuan, mysterious — in a word, exciting. So my little dream right now is to create a “small media mentality” within “big media company.” What does that look like? Check in at the end of the summer and I’ll hopefully be able to show you.