The story has been republished in the Washington Post, Mashable and other outlets after first being reported by my old employer, the Philadelphia Citypaper (though local message board Philadelphia Speaks wrote about this before anyone else). Many of these sources are asserting that the city is targeting bloggers with a new tax.

This is untrue. The city created no new tax and any publication saying otherwise is doing some terrible reporting and any outrage about the anti-blogging attitude of the city is a knee-jerk reaction to some poor research.

Technically Philly, in fact, has paid $300 to the City of Philadelphia. However, this was not for any “blog tax,” it was for the business privilege license, a one-time $300 fee required of all businesses in the city. The purpose of the Citypaper story was to point out that the city was considering blogs claimed in tax returns as “businesses” that need to pay for the license.

It’s certainly a horrible waste of resources to pursue blogs with revenue in the hundreds when some companies and individuals owe the city millions in back taxes, forcing the city to do things like offer a tax amnesty to the dead beats.

To be clear: there is no “blog tax” in Philadelphia. None.

Admittedly, the city doesn’t help its public perception when city council threatens to sue Twitter and Facebook over the flash mobs or when the city’s Twitter account vomits Facebook links and often posts in all caps.

However, while these slip-ups over social media may be easy fodder for the Internet savvy to make fun of, there is a much larger issue revealing itself here: the city’s tax structure which can be crippling to entrepreneurial activity and innovation.

As I interview local entrepreneurs every day for Technically Philly, I see a common thread: any business located in the city boundaries of Philadelphia is here despite the city government and not because of it (see the 15 steps one businesswoman had to take). The ridiculous city business privilege tax (which is different than the license) and the wage tax which far outpaces other cities of comparable size are just a few examples of the hurdles many businesses face by choosing to do work in Philadelphia.

When applied to bloggers, the economic impact of the city’s awful tax policy is small while its impact on the web is inflated due the “victims” of the tax. However, when applied to small and mid-sized businesses the impact is, well, cities like King of Prussia and Cherry Hill that are located just outside of the city’s borders. These cities offer a more favorable environment for businesses looking to flee taxes such as the business privilege tax and other fees. The only reason Comcast is headquartered here is because the city created tax breaks just for them.

While the outrage over asking a hobbyist to pay $300 for a blog is understandable, it pales in comparison to the scores of companies that chose to set up shop outside city limits to avoid paying city taxes. While it won’t get headlines on Mashable, those lamenting about the blogger tax ought to direct their energy to urge the city to reconsider the taxes that keep companies, and jobs, outside city limits.

And those looking to do cheap, drive-by digs at Philadelphia should know that they look foolish and out of touch. Don’t believe me? Come visit.

As of last week, we can check that one off of our todo list.

Starting at the end of this month I will be leaving my position as editor at Vital Business Media to begin working full time on Technically Philly, the news site I co-founded with Brian James Kirk and Chris Wink in February 2009 to cover tech news in Philadelphia. More appropriately, I will be working full-time at its parent company which includes our work on News Inkubator and Technically Media.

Why?

The business has grown beyond our initial aspirations, and the exhaustion is beginning to affect our growth. However, thanks to that work, we’ve amassed enough of a runway to make a serious go at a journalism startup, something that’s been a personal dream of mine since I was in high school.

It’s also a chance to address the incredible frustration that builds up when you can see the path you need to walk but don’t have the time or resources to do so. I would often attend journalism conferences or read about innovative media entrepreneurs and become overwhelmed with a feeling that Technically Philly could have a deeper impact on Philadelphia if, damnit, we just had more time.

I feel that Technically Philly sits at a crossroads of a growing technology community and a rapidly changing journalism ecosystem here in Philadelphia, an amazing opportunity if we are able play our cards right. I’m tired of seeing wonderful things happen here in Philadelphia with not much coverage from larger or national media outlets. The community here deserves to have a louder voice, something we hope to do a better job at moving forward.

Vital

I also want to take the time to thank everyone over at Vital Business Media. I had a blast working there and I’ve learned a great deal about startups and the media world through our work at emediavitals.com. Covering the media industry while working for a startup gave me a unique perspective on both worlds and I will surely apply the things I’ve learned as we build Technically Philly to be a more sustainable media company. As I’ve told them many times, it felt like getting an MBA.

If you’d like to work for those guys (and you really should) they’re hiring.

Also, I’m putting this out in the open so I force myself to hold to it: I want to blog here at least once every other week with an update of the things we’re trying and how they are working out. I hope you follow along.

Brian James Kirk, Christopher Wink and I have been hard at work trying to do our part in making our ideas and best guesses about local media into a reality (with different rates of success, I’ll add).

I figured I’d shed a little bit of light about what we’ve been thinking and what we’ve been up to. Here is a very broad idea of where we see this whole local media thing heading. I welcome your thoughts and criticisms.

A citywide advertising network

The first generation of news startups are largely by people with an editorial background. It is only after a few months of working for free that most people begin to consider revenue streams.

However, just like newsrooms saw cuts during the recent recession, so did many sales staffs across the business world. Technically Philly thinks that the two sides can come together to help editorially minded news sites pull in some income that is sold by a sales staff with preexisting contacts in the local business world.

We think that an advertising network of high-quality blogs and news websites can offer an appealing option for large of national clients to purchase across an entire city, while the individual verticals can better chase advertisements that are relative to their niche. For example, our buds at Geekadelphia and Technically Philly have very similar audiences so, within our Philly network, we could have a tech vertical.

By neighborhood and by niche

Blogs that cover a neighborhood are nothing new, and monetization efforts expand all the time. Mainstream publications are also increasingly looking to these neighborhood sites to cover the nitty-gritty subject areas to free larger papers up to cover more broad topics. For example consider my good friend Shannon McDonald’s partnership with the Philadelphia Metro’s northeast edition. I worry, however, that traditionally underserved communities will remain underserved as tech savvy areas make the most sense for neighborhood news websites.

We also think that there’s room for local niche sites like Technically Philly that cover a certain vertical refined to a local area. This enables more revenue to be made from events as 95 percent of your readers are within a 20 miles radius and in the same industry. Making connections and building sources are also much easier when refined to one city. We also think that if you own an industry locally, national advertisers and vendors will begin looking your way.

Sharing back end services

It simply doesn’t make sense for each site to have their own lawyer, salespeople, accountants etc. We proposed a solution to this problem with News Inkubator. We didn’t win the Knight News Challenge, but we still think it will be absolutely crucial to build a sustainable local news ecosystem. We need to enable content creators to do what they do best, while pooling our collective knowledge to help flush out best business practices.

J-Lab surmised as much in its report about Philadelphia:

Any Networked Journalism collaboration must respect the fierce independence of these startups while validating their strengths and shoring up their weakness with a business support system, which could include business plans, legal help, tech support, even employee benefits.

Business services

News websites are great at building authentic communities but not so great at working on business models. Large businesses are great at making money but are struggling to build communities on the web. There is a natural overlap here.

Breaking silos

I swear I wrote this before Ryan Sholin’s excellent piece on skills media folks should have to be valuable (a must read on its own). But the silos I refer to are the silos within your town and your community. Local online news can be a meeting ground for people that naturally self-segregate. With Technically Philly we’ve seen the startup community, the video game community, the venture capital community (to name a few) all show up to low key meetups we’ve hosted. We think there’s room to grow, but its a good example of people that could benefit being in the same room, but may often need an extra nudge to make it happen.

Local media can be that nudge.

Partnerships with traditional outlets

Like Shannon’s partnership with the Metro, TP has partnerships with Philadelphia Magazine, Philly.com and several local blogs. Several newspapers have taken to building content networks with local blogs and maybe are exploring ways of sharing advertising revenue. These relationships will mature and evolve as the parties try different models.

A short road map, but I hope you can see where we are going here. Local media needs to be part of a larger ecosystem of other businesses, publications and its readers. I’d love to hear your thoughts about our plan.

One, TechnicallyPhilly is doing as well as any of us could hope when it comes to traffic and community response, so we are making our first moves towards monetization with the slow rollout of our advertising infrastructure. This has been both an exciting and frightening prospect as it is now time to see if we are all as smart as we hope we are. Of course, as we surmised at BCNI, ads are just the first and easiest baby step, and there are many more ideas in the pipeline that I will be certain to share here once we release them.

Thus far, the only equity we have put into the business is sweat and dinners for our bi-weekly meetings. But as we said in our post announcing the effort to our community, we don’t want this to be a hobby or some also-ran of entrepreneurial journalism endeavors. We want this to be our part time job. Or, if we are lucky, a full time gig one day.

How I got a job

Speaking of full time gigs, I’m very happy to announce that I was hired early last month as an Editor at Vital Business Media, a startup headed by Prescott Shibles, former Penton VP of New Media. The job has me traveling to work in their New York City (aka the 67th Ward) offices twice a week, while working from Philadelphia during the rest of the work week.

I really wish I could talk more about what I have been up to, but you’ll have to wait until we launch our first editorial product.

What I can say, for everyone that just recently graduated, is how I got the job. I was put in touch with Vital and their management with someone who was a regular reader of this site. After the hiring, I was told that I was given a serious look because of the side projects I was building while freelancing to pay the rent.

The lesson? Chances are there will be not be a job waiting for most journalism grads. While we can sit around and lament the loss of the “traditional” path, it won’t do anybody any good. Take a side job and then hustle to create your own path. Gather some peers and start your own publication. Organize an event. Start a podcast. Try something. Anything.

Use your newly discovered free time as an incubator for all of the ideas you have about saving journalism and media.

At worst, you fail and you learned that idea X wasn’t valid and you don’t waste any more time. If you succeed, you can find yourself new opportunities.

When I showed up an hour late to the bar, something seemed funny. As I walked down the sidewalk I had to step over bikes that were thrown anywhere there was space. Most of the bike rack slots were taken. A ton of noise was coming from the inside, and the guy guarding the door was staring at me like I was a 15-year-old trying to buy beer. I was greeted with a sign that said the event was full and nobody else was getting in.

There were no rock stars in there. No bands. No comedians. Just a bunch of Philly locals talking about innovative products and ideas. And those local people managed to pack a bar to the brim like it was a Friday night. And that’s when I knew, something was happening here. Philadelphia was about to get a kick in the pants from the tech community.

I spend a lot of time that summer and winter trying to convince my friend Brian James Kirk to start a technology-based news site with me. He said things like “no” and “wait until I graduate” and “seriously, Sean get off of my doorstep before I call the cops.”  He had been writing a tech column named Technologicology the local blog Philebrity, and was gathering a loyal readership (see his Ignite wrap up here). Well, after a lot of convincing I’m proud to announce Technically Philly, a joint collaboration between myself, Brian, and Christopher Wink.

While in a soft launch phase, we have confirmed what we always knew: The Philadelphia tech scene is thriving. Every day we add a handful of start ups, design firms, or locally-built Web applications to our coverage list. Our event calendar is packed to the brim, and we feel that we have barely scratched the surface. People are emailing the three of us out of the blue to show signs of support and to offer information.

But my personal motives for co-founding this site go further than a desire for news. Personally, I’m tired of Silicon Valley getting the bulk of the technology coverage on the Web. I’m tired of Philadelphia getting breezed over when it comes to hosting large technology-based events. I don’t want innovative thinkers in Philadelphia to feel that they have to move West to accomplish anything. It’s about time that Philadelphia stood up and let the world know that wonderful things are happening here.

For all the above reasons and more I’m proud to unleash Technically Philly to the world. I hope you follow along and subscribe. We are also always in search of local companies and people that are doing wonderful things in the city. Please, drop us a line.

Oh and I’ll be presenting more details about how we got the site up and running in less than a week at my BarCamp News Innovation presentation.