Great New Armonk Website Started

This article appeared in the Journal News on January 2, 2009

NORTH CASTLE - An Armonk resident with a background in advertising has created a Web site that aims to combine town news with information on the arts, the outdoors, transportation and other facets of the community.

Michelle Boyle launched the site, AllAboutArmonk.com, two months ago in the hopes of connecting disparate elements of the community. The home page covers some of the major local news stories over the past several weeks, including the Byram Hills school district budget, local gas prices, the sale of the Armonk Bowl property to New York City, the town budget and the town holiday display. Other pages focus on police news, health and fitness, and education.

"The home page, I try to keep fresh and very current," Boyle said, by publishing items as they become available rather than on a weekly or monthly schedule.

AllAboutArmonk is the latest of several new Web sites and print publications in central and northern Westchester trying to fill the niche for local news. The nonprofit NewCastleNow.org, which covers New Castle, was launched in October 2007 with a university grant promoting digital journalism. The Examiner, a print paper, started in September 2007 and covers Mount Kisco and Pleasantville, and has been steadily expanding.

Boyle has two children in college and one at Byram Hills High School. She has been involved in many local organizations, including the Friends of the North Castle Public Library and the town Conservation Board. She said she started AllAboutArmonk.com in reaction to the disconnectedness she saw among organizations and institutions in town and as a way to use her skills and interests in the Internet and advertising.

"One thing led to the next, and I just created one," she said.

Though Armonk is in the title, Boyle hopes to report news from all over North Castle and interesting items beyond its borders.

Caryl Hahn, a resident of the Windmill neighborhood in Armonk and a friend of Boyle's, was considering creating her own Web site before she heard about Boyle's. Hahn said she grew up in Ossining, where there was a paper so local that it published school lunch menus, and she saw the void in town.

She's happy Boyle took the leap. "Twenty years ago, it would have been a newspaper, and now it's a Web site," Hahn said.

Since starting the site in October, Boyle has added a columnist but has done the bulk of the work herself. She said she hopes to develop a team of writers, columnists and ad representatives. The idea is that most of the content will come from the community. As people or organizations let her know what is going on, she will put it on the site. Since October, the site has gotten more than 5,300 hits, she said.