Amy Rolph

Seattlepi.com has hired a new writer to replace Monica Guzman.

Amy Rolph, a business reporter for The Daily Herald in Everett, will join the online newspaper’s staff in mid-July. Rolph currently writes for The Storefront, the Herald’s small business blog.

The hire could indicate Hearst’s willingness to keep Seattlepi.com going. A recent story in Crosscut by Bill Richards, found here, questioned the future viability of the site. As reported by Richards, Seattlepi.com’s reporting staff numbers just 17 and the site is not profitable. Hearst had planned to develop its online sites through an e-reading service platform called Skiff, but sold Skiff to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in mid-June. The sale left some to question Hearst’s future intentions for online sites like Seattlepi.com.

But the addition of 26-year-old Rolph could suggest continued interest by Hearst in maintaining its Seattle presence. Rolph fills an absence left by 27-year-old Guzman, who joined the start-up Intersect in June. Guzman developed and ran Seattlepi.com’s quirky, gossipy Big Blog, and developed a name for herself around town as a social media guru. Last week, Guzman won Seattle Weekly’s award for the town’s “Sexiest Blogger.”

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After a slower than expected start, Xconomy’s Seattle team hopes the next year will bring the tech news site closer to profitability.

In the chain’s Seattle office, recent changes could help the tech site make money. Veteran journalist Greg Huang, who co-founded the Seattle office two years ago with fellow reporter Luke Timmerman, is heading to the chain’s Boston office. Timmerman will remain behind and head up the Seattle office, with new hire Thea Chard joining him.

Luke Timmerman

Chard, a recent graduate of the University of Southern California, worked for a year at the Queen Anne View neighborhood blog – owned by Seattle-based Next Door Media — before taking the job with Xconomy. Timmerman acknowledged that the team chose Chard over other applicants with more experience and higher salary requirements. He added, though, that they selected her because they were impressed with her work at the Queen Anne View.

“In a year, she made it one of the best blogs in the city,” Timmerman said. “She impressed us.”

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Humberto Martinez

When Seattleites think of The Big Blog, we think of energetic 20-something Monica Guzman. After all, what would the Seattlepi.com’s Big Blog be without Monica riding the Sound Transit light rail with throngs of young Seattleites in their underwear, joining the flash Glee mob dancing to “Don’t Stop Believing” at Westlake Center, or hosting weekly Big Blog meet-ups at coffee shops around town?

We’re about to find out. As of last week, Guzman is no longer the woman behind The Big Blog banner. She left the popular, chatty Seattlepi.com blog to join a company called Intersect. Founded two years ago but still in stealth mode, Intersect is led by Peter Rinearson, a former journalist and Microsoft vice president who co-authored a book with Bill Gates.

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Melody Overton at a Seattle Starbucks

By day, she’s a criminal defense attorney.

But before work, after work, and on weekends, she’s StarbucksMelody.

For the past nine months, Melody Overton has been building her brand on the blog StarbucksMelody.com. Though she is not employed by Starbucks, Overton acts as a sort of brand ambassador for the company. She promotes new products, spreads Starbucks news, and creates discussion forums for fellow Starbucks fans.

Overton is part of a growing number of brand aficionados who blog, tweet, and spread the word about a company or product they believe in. Neither a journalist nor a Starbucks employee, Overton falls in a new, undefined category. She promotes a product made by a company who has never asked her or encouraged her to do so.

“I don’t think of myself as a journalist,” Overton said. “I felt all along the purpose of my blog was to share the rich experience I’ve had with Starbucks with the rest of the world.”

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