I don’t know what the balance sheet looks like, but sites like MinnPost.com, VoiceofSanDiego.org, SacramentoPress.com all meet the criteria of original reporting by staff, too.

We are not there yet folks…we just are not.

“It’s always interesting to get a Google alert about how something you worked on is getting killed — especially when it’s not.

That happened yesterday when I got an alert about a story on PaidContent.org claiming that The Bakersfield Californian is shutting down its community web sites, including Bakotopia.com and The Bakersfield Voice. This was news to me, and it didn’t jibe with what I’d heard during a trip to Bakersfield a week ago. And after about 15 minutes of internal reporting I learned that it was not only inaccurate, but the exact opposite of the truth.”

Given the latest cuts in his operation, what is the point of continuing to raise the spectre of us getting sick, hit by cars, kidnapped by UFOs, as if he were comparing us to an operation with some much-larger editorial staff?

What is omitted in ongoing attempts to suggest that we are destined to fail, or have some horrific misfortune befall us and put us out of commission, is the fact that we continue to add resources.

My family and I spent six days out of town recently and were able to pay for a tremendous amount of talented reporting and photojournalism help to continue covering the news. (And for most of the stories, I think those “filling in” for us did a better job on the stories than we would have, particularly the excellent photos and video!)

Also, our “participation” is far beyond the comments and forum posts that you might suggest comprise 5% of site readers. What you don’t see – though we write in as transparent and veil-lifting a way as we can, to give due credit to those who inspired or sparked the coverage – is the sum total each day of e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, telephone, even snail-mail story tips, shared photos and short reports, in-person conversations, etc.

Some sites may count their “contributions” as direct-produced “reader blogs” or upload-tool-facilitated “UGC”; ours take a different form, but still represent a considerable amount of community collaboration.

Despite new competition, GA shows — without even all the final late-night numbers in — we just completed our second-biggest month ever (the snow-plagued December 2008 still holds the title, though not by much if you look at visits instead of pageviews). And we’re working on yet more projects and collaborations that will come to light in the weeks/months ahead.

Contrary to conventional-wisdom naysayers, I believe this IS the genesis of a “scalable” or “sustainable” model. EVERY SMALL BUSINESS STARTS WITH SOMEBODY WORKING THEIR BUTT OFF FOR A YEAR, TWO YEARS, THREE YEARS. (My husband and I both had parents who owned retail stores. We saw that firsthand.) Even in the early days of the average small community newspaper, somebody was burning the midnight oil.

You grow if you are doing something right. Who knows, just maybe, maybe possibly, there’s a small sliver of the possibility that we are. At least yesterday, and hopefully today, and who knows about tomorrow.

Before I go off to my 2-hour nap, while I’m at it … this model is working in places that are not so geographically isolated too. Inspired by what we wound up doing, my husband’s best college buddy started a neighborhood-news site in of all places the LA Metro area. It’s called Altadenablog. And with the fire emergency that’s raging right now, he’s getting five-digit pageviews, though he’s certainly not putting on the showboat performance of the LA Times and their gazillion maps, tweets, streams.

On the other coast, of course, you have the grandma of us all, Baristanet.

This too will of course evolve. I don’t even consider our operation a “website” any more … it is a service that provides news and information in a variety of channels … Facebook and Twitter (and not just story link feeds), mobile, good ol’ RSS, and who knows what’s next.

Good night, er, morning.

There is a school of thinkers out there who doubt whether there is enough interest in local news now that it compete with so much fragmentation. That’s what I was alluding to.