Mary Serreze and April Francis, publisher and web developer of the Paradise City news portal Northampton Media.com, entertained class, today, with the unusual and inspiring stories of their careers in journalism, thus far.Mary, who has a master's degree in landscape design, was a technical support person at the Daily Hampshire Gazette then a radio host and producer. She jumped into reporting when the proposed redesign of Exit 19 off Route 91 threatened to curtail bike access to the bridge connecting Northampton and Hadley.
"Nobody's going to tell me not to ride my bike on the Coolidge Bridge," Mary said. And she hasn't looked back.
April was a Holyoke Community College student working full time at a pizza place and taking care of a young daughter before she started making serious money selling vintage clothing on Ebay. She attained "power seller" status before quitting the online shopping giant, starting her own web site and learning search engine optimization to bring traffic to the site, where she also modeled lingerie in the persona of "Roxy McKellen." Before long, Roxystyles was the first thing Google turned up for the keywords "sexy Halloween costume" and "sexy lingerie," and April was driving three carloads of product to the post office every day. When it got too hard to keep up, she decided to get out of retail and into the web development business.
These days, the two have been staying up late working on "super nerd stuff," as April put it, to make Northampton Media the go-to portal for all things Northampton and beyond. They're still a lean and mean operation, but "We're very serious about making money," Mary said. She has applied for grants; they've got some advertising and the next thing on tap is a fundraiser with the emphasis on FUN.
"One of the keys is keeping it lightweight," said Mary about the future of journalism. "Does it really take 100 cubicles to produce the news?"
Eddie Hand, for one, was convinced!
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