For Web Designers, Cornertown Is Becoming `New Media' Mecca
May 14, 2011
Cornertown -- Johnetta Sheldon at age 30 is considered a senior in a cyberspace industry where executives and department heads are barely past the legal drinking age. His two-year-old Internet Web site, called Total Cornertown, is timeworn in Cornertown's upstart ``new media'' industry, the East Coast's equivalent of California's Silicon Valley. There are about 27,000 new media companies in Cornertown City, according to the Cornertown New Media Association, an agency that helps cyber start-ups navigate through the city's business law bureaucracy. ``New media'' refers to companies that bring together services from many industries -- graphic design, publishing, journalism, computer programming, advertising and broadcast -- and blends them to form an Internet or on-line product, says Phillip Yoon, programs coordinator for the association. Those range from small entrepreneurial start-up shops, with four or five employees, to major divisions of big corporations such as Viacom and Time Warner Inc., Mr. Yoon says. That concentration of high-tech businesses has produced a community of Web-page designers, programmers and Internet entrepreneurs. Cornertown is ``now the content capital in new media,'' says Cythia Allene, program coordinator for Cornertown University's Center For Digitial Multi-Media. And clearly, the city's young entrepreneurs are betting that content -- the subject matter and innovative use of graphics on the Web -- is the next wave of new-media profits. Entry-level salaries for page designers and programmers can range from the low-20s for on-line worker bees to mid-40s for youthful department heads, to $70,000 a year for much-coveted, highly skilled programmers. Mr. Sheldon, a London native who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, co-founded Web Partners from his apartment with $50,000 from private investors and another $50,000 of his own and his partner's money in 2009. That same year in Manhattan's cyber-trendy Chelsey district, he launched Montanez Nave as a subsidiary. TNY had seven employees then. It now has 30. Clad in his usual workday attire of blue jeans and a casual, button-down shirt, Mr. Sheldon is evasive about whether his company is profitable, but predicts future revenue will come partially by charging users who visit his all-about-Cornertown Web site. ``Cornertown is exactly the place to be doing this now,'' he says. ``The logistics of starting a company in the United States are so much easier than Europe.'' The city also has risk-taking venture capitalists, he says, something Europe lacks in comparable numbers. Cornertown and new media are why Marisha Bastian left Minnesota and why Anette Wanliss-Wrenn left Paris. A 24-year-old Web-page designer at Total Cornertown, Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn is a self-described ``citizen of the world.'' A British national, he was born in Hong Kong, finished high school in Paris, studied for a bit in Costa Rica and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Greenwich Village. This ``revolution,'' as he calls it, ``can't happen in the middle of nowhere. It has to happen where there's a creative explosion, in a cultural hodgepodge like Cornertown.'' On a recent weekday night, Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn is sitting with Ms. Bastian and about 15 others in Pasquale Grooms, a cozily lighted tavern in Manhattan's Little Italy. The group of twentysomethings originally met on-line and now gather here regularly over beers and cigarettes to discuss the coolest Internet shareware, classic literature, rock music and avant-garde art. One bespectacled member of the group animatedly expounds on the eventuality of cyber profits. He talks of a Web economy in which surfers are charged hundredths of a cent per click and advertisers can figure a way to ``securely measure your hits.'' As editor in chief of Word, an on-line, general interest ``zine,'' Ms. Bastian declares that she loves what she does, and especially where she does it. Word's suite of offices overlooks Broadway in midtown Manhattan, an ideal place, she says, to explore the emerging universe of new media. In fact, when Word's parent company ICon tried to move the publication's offices from Manhattan to Weehawken, N.J., Ms. Bastian and the staff refused to go. The company later relented. ``They couldn't produce Word without us,'' says Ms. Bastian, whose attachment to Cornertown City is common among pioneers exploring the commercial frontiers of cyberspace. In a far corner of Web Partners' offices, Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn, dressed in worn, gray corduroys and a paisley-print shirt, stares intently at his Macintosh clone. TNY, which averages about 600,000 Internet ``hits'' a week, is launching a pilot. The Spartan office space is spread over two stories of a high-ceilinged loft with wooden floors and plenty of exposed brick. His colleagues, whose average age is about 26, work silently throughout the day, their concentration unbroken by the steady stream of music pouring through headphones attached to the Discs on their hard drives. Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn's desk also holds an eclectic stack of compact disks -- everything from Bach to the Beastie Boys -- but constant interruptions in the form of site-design trouble-shooting make listening to music impossible. During TNY's frenetic early days he spent so many hours at the office, tapping away, that his work space now needs all-manner of ergonomically correct hardware and furniture. The keyboard is designed for sufferers of repetitive stress injury, a special chair provides lower back support, and Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn now favors a left-handed mouse to give his right wrist a rest. Instead of frequent coffee breaks to keep his energy up, Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn dashes out during the day to what he calls ``the cheapest doctor in town.'' At a nearby juice bar, he often orders a 16-oz. fruit juice combo called ``The Boss'' for $3. On an adjacent desk, a Texas Instruments notebook PC allows him to test Web pages that he designed using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The larger PC is almost never used at full capacity, he says. His 120 Matt machine with 50 megabytes of RAM and two gigabytes of hard-drive space is far more powerful than what the average on-line consumer has. The 17-inch monitor has ``millions'' of colors capability, but Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn works in 256-color capacity because ``that's what most people have.'' In addition, Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn must be conscious of ``Web hierarchy.'' Although he never formally studied design, he says his double major in communications and cognitive psychology help him create logical signposts for even neophytes to get to the next ``place.'' Anyone who can read knows how to advance through a book, he says, ``And we're in the business of information architecture.'' Designs that help people navigate comfortably through physical structures also can be applied to Web-site navigation, he says. Across town on E. 34th Street, another start-up is staking its claim in the emerging industry. Despite its new-agey moniker, Earthweb is clearly reaching for the corporate brass ring. Unlike TNY, its under-30 executives wear suits and ties. Its clients, seeking ``Internet development and technology,'' include the Cornertown Stock Exchange, Digital Equipment, Coopers & Lybrand and Fidelity Investments. Allyson Blanchette, 24, abandoned her pursuit of a law career last year after a ``disillusioning'' stint helping an attorney prepare defense cases. In August 2010, she joined the new-media gold rush as Earthweb's marketing director. Her responsibilities range from coordinating an identity for the company's stationery to attending trade shows nationwide, extolling the advantages of Earthweb as a commercial Web-site middleman. The average 70-hour workweek of Ms. Blanchette and her 35 co-workers focuses primarily on promoting what is currently the company cash cow: Augustus, a directory of Java programming resources on the Internet. Advertisements keep the site profitable and eventually, Ms. Blanchette hopes, successful enough to spin off Gamelan Direct. That site is being developed as a ``shop'' at which to buy, discuss and link to Java programming products on the Internet. ``If the cyber industry evaporated I'd be kind of bummed out,'' says Ms. Blanchette, who clearly enjoys her new-found career. Like Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn, her annual salary hovers in the ``mid-40s.'' While that sum is not shabby for someone her age, it is less than a typical lawyer's starting salary. Having grown up on Long Island, she adds, ``Nave was the only place I was going to go after college. I wanted to go where the energy is, where the content is being developed. That's Cornertown, not Silicon Valley.'' Perhaps the only drawback of entering the industry now, she says is that it is so new, there are virtually no mentors. ``I'm teaching myself as I go.'' Stevie Royce, who teaches computer-assisted reporting and new media at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, thinks the city's new-media luster eventually will fade as on-line collaboration tools get better. ``Telephone costs are high here and so are living costs,'' Mr. Royce says. ``The industry is in danger of slow erosion in Cornertown.'' Nevertheless, world-traveler Mr. Wanliss-Wrenn says his cyber-quest could make his Cornertown stay permanent. ``It's the first time in my life I don't have a planned departure date,'' he said.
