Founded in 2006, redbankgreen.com is one of the earliest online-only hyperlocal news sources. It’s the beating heart of the Red Bank community — and has the audacious goal of serving Red Bank for 100 years. Kenny Katzgrau advised its publisher since 2011 and acquired it in 2023.

Tell us about Red Bank Green: The mission, goals, purpose.

To see to it that RedBankGreen lasts for at least 100 years. We stand for fun, the vitality of Red Bank, and the community.

National mission: To radically rethink and innovate in local news. Break rules, call bullshit when we see it, and build a company that lasts. If we can, provide a light for those searching for it.

You recently launched a new website that is very innovative and unique. Walk us through the thought process, planning and launch.

I got into a little more depth on my blog, Livin on a Prayer.

But here’s what I didn’t say.

It’s still very much a work in progress. It’s a sculpture that has a definite form but hasn’t been refined and polished yet, which might actually be a never-ending thing.

I started with, “How could Red Bank Green be cool as hell for Red Bank, its advertisers and actually make money?” Really.

Many local news publishers don’t approach it from that angle. But to be clear, I don’t know that anything I’m doing will actually work, but it’s fun to try.

As for the thought process and the ideas that came out of it, it’s like searching for the right piece of granite in a quarry.

I thought about it for a long time and eventually sketched out the first site concept on my iPad. I called it “Serious Fun.” This is the actual sketch:

Then I specified how it should look and behave as accurately as I possibly could in a Google Doc and Loom videos. Some requirements:

  • Who we are and what we stand for must be front and center.
  • Advertising should be lightweight, native, and provide the ability to integrate the businesses and their owners, because they’re community members, too.
  • The final product must be a closer reflection of the community than what we’ve seen before. This includes an innovative feature called “Partyline” where verified readers can text in their own news posts from their phone, which of course undergo editorial review.

I called this the “ViBE” model in my post. Vision, Business and Everyone.

Then I sent it to a designer. The circled letters are points where I made particularly detailed notes for the designer.

After much refining, I had another thought.

How can we add a sense of community in a new and novel way? Ah, custom artwork in the header. Something that really makes you feel the sense of fun and pride of living in Red Bank.

I spent months finding the right artist to draw the right concept in the right way. Lots of false starts. This was one of those artistic excesses on my part, but there was no talking sense into me.

Refining, refining.

Here’s what we came up with. I didn’t just want a photo. I wanted something that couldn’t be replicated. It’s a depiction of the summer pedestrian plaza called “Broadwalk” in Red Bank.

And for the holidays, we made some changes:

Then I sent it to a developer to implement the design.

Refining, refining.

Once it was “good enough” I launched. 

What are the top learnings from this process?

Probably that the old rule of “however long you think this project will take, multiply it by three” still stands.

I really wanted to step into the realm of things that haven’t been tried before and start on that foundation, and that takes a while. I simply did not have it in me to take something off the shelf. Lots of publishers asked, “why don’t you simply use [insert pre-fab theme or service here]?”

I’m a developer, creative, and I can sell — if I’m not trying to innovate for this industry, who is? I don’t mean that in a pompous way at all. I think I have a responsibility to do my best and try new things. Since I was 25 years old and standing outside the elevator doors at the Block by Block (pre-LION) local news conference in Chicago, showing Broadstreet to anyone who would listen, I’ve always done that.

Another reaffirmation: You can do something truly unique and useful and most people probably won’t get it right away. They don’t know what to make of it. They don’t see what makes it different or why it might be important. In fact, they might reject it because it’s not what they’re used to.

Most will read this, look at Red Bank Green, think about it for five seconds, click out and never think about it again. That’s normal.

But there are certainly some that are reading this and saying, “hey, I get it. This is cool.” I’m always searching for people that get it. We’re going to build the future. If that’s you, I’m here: publisher@redbankgreen.com.

What results have you seen with the new website?

Our page speed went from 30-something to 95-plus and I think I can take it further. The advertisers have loved the new layouts and formats, they’ve never seen it before. Their click and engagement rates are insane. There’s more commenting on the site (although much room for improvement).

One of the cool thanks that I did with the advertising was make it more informational. I don’t like selling regular old banner ads. I noticed the ad performance went crazy.

So I built a button and installed it in a local storefront to make sure we were actually sending them customers. As a fun fact, Richard Gringas from Google News Initiative was the first person I ever demo’d it for, and I think he was pretty amused by it.

Here’s a picture of the business owner after I installed it, with the button on the counter next to a sign that says “If you are here today or in the past because of our ad on redbankgreen, push this button.”

Lo and behold, the first two button presses came in over Thanksgiving weekend. We officially closed the advertising feedback loop for a single customer. I wonder how I can scale this up.

More on that here:

What has been the reaction from the community?

A lot of very positive feedback from the community. When I launched I wrote a letter to the readers explaining that this is more like an ongoing airport renovation than a quick new facade.

There were some curmudgeons (there will always be curmudgeons) who liked the old site, but I don’t see how anyone could have put up with that thing. And they came around to the new look pretty quickly.

Also, the new site allowed me to experiment with a service I call “Partyline.” Basically, readers can text in their own news to a special phone number. WordPress catches the text message, checks for spelling and grammer with ChatGPT, and sets it up as a draft for review.

Here’s a picture I took at the Red Bank tree lighting:

And my text:

And me texting it:

And the post analytics using Broadstreet’s Flux analytics.

Tell us a little more about yourself. You run an R&D company and are publisher of Red Bank Green. How do these two roles collide or help you?

People mainly know me in this space from Broadstreet. That’s how I built my, uh, street cred. But I bought RedBankGreen because the publisher told me they were thinking of selling. They suggested that I buy it. At first I thought it was crazy and something that would be a distraction. Then I started to worry — what if some local political hack bought it? What would they do to the gem that is RedBankGreen? I knew what I had to do.

As for how sitting in the driver’s seat of Red Bank Green has changed my thinking, more than I ever could have imagined. The 5-degree shift in perspective has given me radical insight into the future of Red Bank Green, local news, and what’s going to happen with Broadstreet.

What else should we know?

This was all done with maybe $5,000-$6,000 in spend, maybe a little more. I’m a pretty scrappy operator. Not thrifty to my own detriment, though; I am practical.

A stripped-down custom design could have been done for $2,000-$3,000. That said, I’m kind of like a carpenter who’s been on the job site for years and knows how to get things without paying crazy general contractor margins. I know the good plumbers, electricians, and what they should get paid.

The most important thing I want to say to other publishers thinking about a redesign is this: If you’re not thinking about exactly how you’ll meet your revenue goals with a new design, down to the dollar, then you would probably be naive to expect to meet any revenue goals. I really mean that.

A somewhat related but necessary aside: Let’s be mindful about philanthropic funding and throwing money around. Some money’s good, but for the purposes of innovation, can actually be very dangerous. 

Excess money creates excesses in operational overhead, reduced risk-taking, and too many people with their hands on the steering wheel. That’s bad for innovation. I’m not trying to ice things over with funding in this space, but the tree that starts out growing the cracks of a rock (or a desert), if it survives, is going to be a really strong tree.

Local news isn’t dying. It has a spectacular future. We’re getting there. Long live local news!