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RaisingBakersfield.com: An online community space for parents debuts
| Thursday, May 8 2008 2:13 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, May 8 2008 2:13 PM
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The Bakersfield Californian family of publications has given birth today to its newest Web site, RaisingBakersfield.com, an online community space for local moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, aunts, uncles, and anyone else who has a stake in raising Bakersfield’s next generation.
Are you so enamored with your kids that you want to post their pictures online and blog about their progress?
Do you want to keep an online journal detailing your daily fears and joys as a parent?
Are you hoping to find great deals on anything from toys to tutoring, or to get information on upcoming family events in the community?
Do you want to meet, vent with, bond with, or give advice to other parents or grandparents?
Then you’ll want to become a member of this new urban tribe.
WHAT SOME USERS ARE SAYING
“I love the website. It is easy to use and very creative. I think it will be a lot of fun and informative on many levels for the parents in the Bakersfield community,” said Jane McCullagh, who goes by the user name “Yomama.”
According to her user profile, McCullagh is “a young-at-heart 60-something mother of three grown daughters and grandmother to two young boys,” who has been a schoolteacher and superintendent as well as a stay-at-home mom.
“I hope to share with you some of the joys I have had as a parent and grandparent and offer any advice and tips I can to that next generation of moms out there!” she tells her fellow site members.
That wish to network is the spirit behind RaisingBakersfield.com,, and is reflected in the welcome on its home page by content manager Jason Sperber, father of a 31⁄2-year-old.
“RaisingBakersfield.com is a place, on the web, where we can connect and reflect together,” Sperber (user name “Jason”) said. “Parenting is both the most challenging and the most important job we will ever have, but we can’t do it alone. We shouldn’t have to. This is our community, one we are building for the sake of our children, and together, we are all Raising Bakersfield.”
HOW THE SITE WAS CONCEIVED
Mary Lou Fulton, The Californian’s vice president of audience development, said the idea for a Web site for local parents came from several Californian employees last year during a companywide effort to look for new product offerings for the community.
One of the people who suggested the idea, Fulton said, was circulation manager Cristi Tallman, who was expecting a child 16 years after the birth of her last.
“I found the Internet to be an invaluable resource,” Tallman said. But even online, something soon became obvious to her: “There was no good local source where I could connect with other moms and moms-to-be.”
Fulton said Tallman became part of a team of employees who studied for months the possibility of launching a site like Raising Bakersfield. Research included interviews with the operators of similar sites in other cities, she said. Everything they found pointed to a local need.
“Raising Bakersfield will be the best and most comprehensive local online resource for parents,” Fulton said.
Site users can even sign up to receive free e-mail newsletters to keep up to date on the latest information available on the Web site.
A WEB SITE AND PUBLICATION FOR ADVERTISERS
And for local business owners, Fulton said, Raising Bakersfield will open up opportunities for online and print advertising, as a monthly glossy newsletter will feature selections from the Web site along with an extensive listing of local deals and an event calendar. The print newsletter will be distributed free at more than 100 local businesses catering to parents and families, Fulton said.
“We especially welcome advertising from smaller businesses that don’t have big budgets,” she said.
“This is one of the most affordable advertising programs we have ever offered at The Californian and we hope many local businesses will take advantage of it.”