Meet The Buffalo Hive, WNY's new culturals-and-calendar site
Community-driven non-profit focuses on life-bettering news for-profit media abandoned
On Feb. 20, 2023, when Lee Enterprises announced it would print The Buffalo News in Cleveland, I started asking people how to build The Buffalo Hive.
Today The Buffalo Hive is live, at thebuffalohive.com.
Its mission: to serve as a digital town square, where this community of 1 million souls can find out the good stuff going on all around them. One site to answer the question that feeds our souls and builds community: What’s happening?
What you see at that address is the beginning of a publication. In restaurant terms, it’s soft opening time. Expect the menu and service level to grow.
As more folks show up looking for music, art, food, theater, church suppers, and other events, The Buffalo Hive will get better. As more folks take the time to type their own events into the calendar form, it will get broader. Efforts are under way to bolster the calendar with the many local single-focus calendars already maintained by diverse groups. Not to replace them, but serve as a central repository.
Before the details, though, an origin story. The Buffalo Hive was conceived in 438 Clemens Hall, during the journalism class I’ve taught in the English Department since 2000.
For 23 years, after every semester, undergraduates grilled me: Should I pursue a career in journalism?
Since the pandemic, my answer has been: It would be folly to expect a lifelong career in for-profit media today. If your work is first-rate and your friend network robust, you may have a chance. But cascading layoffs have a veteran bullpen already looking for work.
So your best shot is building your own ship. Be essential to a community, and work out how to make a living from that community.
After laying all that rhetoric on my ENG 213 students, Cleveland Day was put up or shut up time.
That plus my faith in the untapped genius of our community launched a Stone Soup journey. Knowing nothing about how to build a community journalism site, but convinced we needed one, I started talking to like-minded people and subject experts.
And wound up here. The Buffalo Hive is up and running, the first draft of what it will become.
Personally, I’m pleased as punch. Especially since I won’t be in charge, just contributing, and working on my multimedia mogul career. My ship is FourBites.net, and I can steer it wherever I please without risking anyone’s future but my own.
The Buffalo Hive belongs in the hands of people who can devote themselves to its growth.
Like Elmer Ploetz. He’s the editor, the person in charge. He’s a former colleague at The Buffalo News, who went on to become a journalism professor at SUNY Fredonia 16 years ago. He brings the community-oriented background, the editing skills, and the patience to nurture this seedling. Get in touch with him at thebuffalohive@gmail.com.
Other ex-News names among its writers are Jeff Miers, on music, Melinda Miller, on theater, and Colin Dabkowski, whose return to Buffalo arts coverage with occasional contributions was responsible for that angels chorus you just heard. My initial contribution, a decade in the making, was You can’t say that in a restaurant review, a collection of sentences trimmed from drafts, by myself and others, for a variety of excellent reasons.
The Buffalo Hive’s board, too new to have titles sorted yet, includes Sarah Ali, Mickey Harmon, David Lotempio, Bob McLennan, and Alexa Wajed.
The Buffalo Hive is authorized to accept tax-deductible donations while its own 501(c)(3) application proceeds. Arts Services Inc. (ASI) is The Buffalo Hive’s fiscal sponsor.
To donate online, click here for directions, even a handy QR code. (You’ll have to scroll down through 10 organizations before you get to The Buffalo Hive.)
Or, send checks to:
Arts Services Inc., re: The Buffalo Hive
2495 Main Street, #401
Buffalo, NY 14214
You can help in other ways, too. If you can offer a few hours as a social media assistant, or calendar assistant, for example, it’s as good as cash money to Ploetz and company.
Who is Elmer Ploetz?
Elmer Ploetz launched his first publication in high school.
Ever since, he’s wanted to do it again.
“It's something I've always wanted to do. It's something I've always believed in,” said the Cattaraugus High School Class of 1977 graduate. “Over the years, everything that I've done has sort of led me to being the person to do this.”
“There are a whole bunch of calendar things out there. What we're doing is crossing borders, bringing all of the information together.”
One calendar to include them all.
Ploetz has done websites and documentaries aplenty. He’s done non-profit boards, with the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame and Sportsman's Americana Foundation. “To me, this is sort of a dream job. And it's going to be my dream second job because I do need my paycheck from SUNY.”
After a lifetime in journalism, Ploetz said, he believes it’s “not just covering cops, courts, official filings, that kind of thing. Journalism is about how people live, and a lot of people's lives are built around the arts. We are covering people's lives, and the things that matter to them.”
“The things that I'm interested in are not being covered by my hometown community media,” he said. “The Buffalo Philharmonic doesn't even get reviewed any more. The AKG gets an occasional story, but nobody writes about what's actually in their gallery.”
That said, give The Buffalo Hive time to gather support, and contributors, and volunteers, Ploetz asked.
“I'm not going to be able to do everything that we can do at the start, because there's so much potential out there,” he said. “There are only so many stories we're going to be able to write in a week, partly determined by how much people contribute at the start.”
The Buffalo Hive’s name was inspired by bees, who are essential to human life, and collectively labor so all may thrive. The BreadHive folks said it wasn’t biting their style, so that made it official.
So how does The Buffalo Hive make your life better?
Let’s start here: Do you have a community event people should know about? Fill out the form and get it on the calendar.
Looking for something to do in Buffalo? Click and check out the offerings. It’ll only get better.
Heard the buzz? Join the Hive.
#30#
Terrific news!