The Terminal turns three this month and hopefully by the time you read this, I’ll have figured out how we’re going to mark the occasion.

I’ve been going back through the posts on my personal blog that got me started on this journey, and even though it’s been more nearly six years, I remember the fact that I wasn’t the first site to be on the scene and I’m definitely not the newest. Looking back also reminded me of how much fun creating and running a site The Terminal can be due to those virtual front porch conversations that happen on and off-line.

In the past sites like Fleabomb provided a taste of Birmingham’s alternative scene. Nowadays, Bham.fm and FreeThinkBham give us a taste of what’s currently happening in our community. I decided that it would be nice to sit down with one of the creators of one of the city’s oldest online portals and one of its newest online endeavors and see what’s driving them to do what they do.

Urbanham.com started more than ten years ago after Russ McClinton returned from Washington, D.C. and decided with others that “…there needed to be an online outlet to share the successes of African Americans in Birmingham as well as share events.” McClinton says that they chose events because it was a common ground that most people shared regardless of demographics.

The site celebrated ten years of serving the community this past June. Future plans include talking to more of the coordinators and promoters involved in organizing the events and branching out into covering other areas of interest. They’ve also launched two additional sites focused on bringing together the city’s faith-based community and its business community.

McClinton says that as people are coming by to see what events are taking place, “they’ll also check out some of the other articles and become educated about what’s going on around them,” something that has been proven successful in other cities via online publications like Gapers Block and Pegasus News.

He said that making the move to Facebook was one of the best things that the website had ever done and that “it worked better than going out to events and passing out flyers.” They already had 5,000 fans by March.

Janet Elizabeth Simpson and Lauren Lippeatt launched Pavo Magazine in September of last year as a monthly online arts and culture publication that also has daily blog posts and an events calendar; Janet serves as the editor in chief, and Lauren is its director of sales and marketing.

Each issue is focused on a theme and is “released” on the 15th of the month, though some stories may not necessarily fit into the theme. There are monthly columns as well, including “Sweet Release Birmingham,” a column written by Simpson that focuses on new music releases by local artists among other things.

Simpson says that they started the publication to highlight artists and culture in Birmingham. Content they felt could be covered better—including artists and musicians that operated under the radar. They decided to approach it from a narrative angle instead of a reporting angle so that “voices could be heard and stories could be told.”

The calendar that they maintain is one that is more “of the moment” instead of trying to be all things to all people, focusing on community events, fundraisers and arts events.
They are both impressed with the level of dedication that the city puts forth. Simpson says, “The people who live here, particularly those who lived through the Civil Rights era, have passed down the mindset that you have to fix things. You can’t wait for it to come from [elected officials], it has to come from you.”

Regardless of why they started the site you could tell while talking to these individuals that they truly cared for the city and were doing this because they were passionate about it—more than anything else. It’s always inspiring to see that level of commitment and enjoyment. Hopefully they will see a financial benefit as time goes on. From personal experience I know that you can occasionally wonder if what you write or offer really makes a difference . . .•

André Natta is the stationmaster for bhamterminal.com, a community blog about Birmingham.