Michael van Baker

A new online magazine called the The SunBreak emerged in Seattle today -- the latest development in what is becoming the very hot arena of hyperlocal news and citizen journalism. Publisher Michael van Baker is a veteran of the Seattle blogging scene, having previously served as editor of Seattlest.

With The SunBreak, van Baker tells TechFlash that he hopes to emulate the Talk of the Town section from The New Yorker.

"I really enjoy the off-angle, supplemental way those news briefs work, and I hope to bring something like that to The SunBreak," he said. The small staff won't necessarily try to break news, instead focusing on slightly longer magazine-style pieces that people would want to "read rather than skim," said van Baker.

Van Baker, the former marketing director at the San Francisco Examiner, has been down this path before. In 1999, he joined a Seattle magazine called ArtsPatron that was backed by David Brewster and Bill Gates Sr. But the ad dollars didn't show, and the print magazine folded.

Calling that experience a "lesson on humility," the 40-year-old is taking a different aproach this time. Instead of trying to go broad, The SunBreak plans to go deep in what he called "iconic micro-niches." That means, for example, that they could cover iPhone app developers in Seattle or Amazon.com's Kindle.

At the top of the page on The SunBreak today are stories about the Seattle Sounders U.S. Open Cup Championship and the expansion of a bar in the Central District.

The site also is encouranging Seattleites to submit posts, but van Baker wants to keep the quality very high and he realizes that not everyone will want to join the coversation.

"Really I'm betting on the value of an educated, fun audience that is engaged with Seattle, rather than massive fly-by page views generated by mentioning "Rachael Ray" in posts as often as possible," he says. "I suppose we look like we're in the Seattle Magazine and Seattle Met space, but I'm not sure we are. We're bloggers, still."