LOGANSQUARIST
After moving to Logan Square, I discovered a lack of resources covering my new beloved community. In 2011, I founded LoganSquarist as a way to connect a burgeoning neighborhood with recent news and local events. Over a decade, the organization grew to publish weekly, manage a business directory and calendar of events, and bring together local neighbors through monthly meetups.
In 2013, LoganSquarist sunset after 13 years serving the neighborhood.
Monthly Stats
The website supported a community of more than 18,000 followers. By covering neighborhood news, food and drink, business, arts and entertainment, politics, crime, living and lifestyle topics, family and youth, historical information and events, LoganSquarist strives to socialize the neighborhood and serve as a resource.
- 12,000+ engaged social fans of 80,000 neighborhood
- 3,000+ weekly newsletter recipients
- 18,000 pageviews, 12,000 users
- 13,000+ comments & shares
- 235,000+ impressions
Engaging Community
With the mission of “socializing the neighborhood,” LoganSquarist wasn’t just an online news outlet; it successfully took an online community offline through neighbor meetups, allowing neighbors to interact with each other in real life.
- 37 neighbor meetups hosted around the Logan Square area
- 2,000 neighbor attendees participated in monthly event
- 50 average attendees and volunteers attending every month
Volunteer Run
LoganSquarist was fueled by the commitment and energy of passionate neighbors providing writing, photography, events planning, marketing and skills.
- 30+ dedicated active volunteers donating spare time every month
- former staffers over the past four years of the organization
- 5 interns benefited from work experience through participation
Homegrown design.
LoganSquarist, a hyperlocal news website serving the Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square, served a readership through daily articles and content. Its site required flexible functionality and device mobility.
LoganSquarist.com Over the Years
LoganSquarist.com experienced a number of redesigns, add features and functionality, and iterations.
Be inspired.
One of the best things I've ever done in my career is work with Kate Hamilton. Her enthusiasm for all things editorial, not to mention her energy and passion for any project she's involved with, is contagious. In addition to being a natural born leader, she's also a creative type, a thinker, a stickler for details, and someone with incredible vision and the drive to get things done. I always marvel at how she is constantly teaching herself new things. She always seems to be ahead of the curve on anything related to social media, and she also has an eye for design. This lady rocks! And she continues to be a mentor to me and others in journalism and communications.
Kate is a real professional and a pleasure to work with. She is a great communicator and always put her client's (my company) interest first. She is tremendously personal and had a great understanding of our business and how she could help it. She is great and is a tremendous asset to any company.
I met Kate through the Association of Women Journalists (AWJ) and immediately was impressed (and inspired) by her creativity, drive, work ethic and use of social media. Her passion for journalism, digital media and communications overall is evident in the projects she takes on, including LoganSquarist, an online news outlet that she founded that uses social media to socialize the neighborhood. What I admire about Kate is her vitality as well as her desire to keep learning and growing personally and professionally. Kate is a modern-day renaissance woman who is multitalented (ask about her travel, knitting and marathon exploits!) and who brings instant value to any team or organization.
Kate did and excellent job with our website. We have received several compliments on how nice it looks and how easy it is to navigate. She also went above and beyond to make sure that we were able to update and the website ourselves through Wordpress. I cannot gush about how awesome she is and how happy we are with the site and her dedication to the project.
Kate has been a fantastic resource for all things digital, whether redesigning my website on Wordpress, fine tuning my social media profiles, or understanding Google Analytics. She's an excellent communicator, and I will absolutely hire her again in the future.
Kate has an incredible amount of drive when it comes to LoganSquarist. In the six months that I’ve been involved, I’ve watched the site grow from a pet project to a respected community publication. This success can be attributed to Kate’s technical and leadership skills. From building out the site to off-hours community management and a consistent flow of content, the site improves by leaps and bounds on a weekly basis. When it comes to team management, Kate delegates tasks in an organized and efficient manner, making her an all around great and inspiring person to work with.
I worked with Kate during my time as a community manager at Lightspan Digital while Kate was my direct manager. Kate’s communication practices really taught me how to navigate the sometimes complicated agency world. As an account manger, Kate smoothly orchestrated 10+ accounts at one time as well as help me manage and prioritize tasks in my role. Kate was a role model during my first few years in the professional world and continues to be so to this day.
Kate is a wealth of knowledge who served as a tremendous mentor for all of our team members while constantly improving processes and workflows. She’s a tremendous project manager, pays great attention to detail, and is able to demand results from her team with respect. At LoganSquarist she has built and led a team of dozens of volunteer contributors committed to her vision of a community resource. I would happily work with Kate again anytime!