The Scoop Bloggers
Sharing the scoop with your community, CEO and founder Kristin Mastre
After three years of blogging on Feasting Fort Collins, Kristin noticed that there were many people in the community who wanted to pursue professional blogging, but didn’t quite know how to make it happen. Wanting to help develop the blogging community in Northern Colorado and create an online media source for those living in and visiting Fort Collins, she founded The Scoop Blog Network in April 2012, creating a team of local bloggers with each one covering their own local niche topic – operating just like Feasting Fort Collins.
The Scoop Blog Network creates hubs of hyper-local bloggers who are eager and dedicated to sharing “the scoop” on what’s going on in their communities. The Scoop Bloggers focus on an individual niche topic, becoming area experts in their particular interest.
The Scoop Blog Network takes care of all of the nitty-gritty behind the scene details of blogging – graphic design, technical moderation, and advertising management, allowing the Scoop Bloggers the freedom to do what they love – writing great posts and sharing the scoop with their communities!
Restaurant reviews and dining news in Fort Collins, by Kristin Mastre
Reviews on Feasting Fort Collins cover a variety of food establishments – locally owned family restaurants, fast-casual chains, coffee houses, breweries, and more. If you can eat it, she will review it.
From her experiences dining at some of the worlds best restaurants when she lived in Las Vegas, Portland and Denver, and the years that she’s cooked home-made meals from scratch (even down to making her own spices) due to her son’s food allergies, Kristin knows what a fresh and delicious meal is supposed to taste like. Being an honest writer, she’ll tell it like she tastes it.
Information and reviews on family activities, businesses, and resources in Fort Collins, by Christi Seidman
Eager to connect with other parents in our community, Growing Up Fort Collins provides a resource for local families in Northern Colorado. Christi’s various experiences as a mom have instilled in her an understanding of parenthood in our community and a genuine empathy for the different challenges parents can face. She’s delving deep into our family-friendly city, exploring a variety of kid’s activities, writing honest reviews of her experiences, and gathering feedback and opinions from other parents.
Inspired information about food, farmers and farming in Northern Colorado, by Erica Gagne Glaze
Erica grew up among roadside farm stands, orchards, dairy farms, backyard gardens and sugar shacks. In her twenties she worked on a vegetable farm and later moved into an organic co-op where they grew all of their food for the year on a ½-1 acre in the happy valley soil of Western Massachusetts. Recently she purchased her own 4.3 acre slice of farm heaven in Northern Colorado and has spent the last year and a half renovating a 1907 farm house and the property. Planting orchards and a vegetable garden, fixing barns, building chicken coops and fences has been one more step toward food independence. She loves to dig it, plant it, grow it, pick it, eat it, read about it, talk about it and share the bounty.
She has spent the last year and a half blogging about her experience building their farmstead. She loves to write and share information. It seemed a natural progression to share her exploration of the Northern Colorado farm community and food scene through Farming Fort Collins.
Northern Colorado Outdoor Adventure Information and Inspiration, by Chloe Johnson
Blending a past life as a news writer and a fondness for trying anything new outdoors, Chloe brings to Fresh Air Fort Collins perspectives on a wide variety of pursuits including running, hiking, and rock climbing. A Fort Collins resident of more than ten years with an inclination for random adventures and a staunch conviction against owning a TV, she can easily recommend local gems and, in fact, finds herself doing it so often she may as well just blog about it. As a writer who believes in building local community and promoting our beautiful natural areas here in northern Colorado, expect her work in Fresh Air to provide the information and inspiration you need to get your own shenanigans off and running.
Live Music, Art and Culture in Fort Collins, by Andrew Schneider
Wyoming native, Andrew first moved to Fort Collins at the age of 5 where he attended Tavelli Elementary and benefitted from the attention and encouragement of a highly dedicated and overworked music teacher. His early love of music would travel across the country and around the world with Andrew as he moved to Florida, Missouri, Georgia, and California with a few escapes to Holland and Portugal before graduating university in 2006 with a BFA in stage management from The Conservatory of Theatre and Dance, Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts at Webster University in 2006.
Andrew’s love for music, entertainment and culture led him to work as a producer in Opera, then documentary television, and on to music videos—all the while building a resume of new media, social networking, and brand marketing credits.
In 2009, after an absence of 14 years, Andrew moved back to Fort Collins to escape the saturated creative market of Los Angeles. Filling his time with a lot of live music, art, culture, and bicycling he works on digital and traditional media projects with a focus on fostering community, fueling passions, and making the world a better place to live and share ideas. Follow the fun on Entertaining Fort Collins.
Recipes Featuring Local Fort Collins Ingredients, by Andrea Karapas
Andrea comes from a family that eats. Being half Greek and half German, food is a large piece of her culture and it spills into every story and memory from her childhood. This just happens to feed her talent for connecting personal stories to food; name a dish and it’s pretty likely that she’ll be able to rattle off a story to go along with it. With each recipe on Serving Up Fort Collins she shares, she will highlight at least two locally sourced ingredients, and show you how to create something fresh and yummy in your own kitchen.
Bars, bands, and adventures in Fort Collins after dark. Sometimes wholesome, sometimes…not, by Sarah Ellsworth
Sarah Ellsworth is a 20-something college grad with a worthless degree and a love of writing. Sarah is not a morning person, so she spends most of her free time in Old Town after nightfall, discovering new bands and trying to track down the perfect vodka martini.
Sarah likes Odell’s 90 Shilling, classic punk, and creative, concise blogging. She dislikes sports, pretension, and writing about herself in the third person. Follow Sarah on Late Night Fort Collins for her unique take on northern Colorado nightlife.
Insights into Politics and Government in Fort Collins, by Jered Kramer
Jered Kramer is a life-long resident of Northern Colorado, a graduate of Colorado State Universityʼs Political Science department with several FEMA NIRS certifications, and a fan of all that the area has to offer.
Jered had no party affiliation until late 2011, when he realized that independent voters were excluded from over half of the elections held in Colorado. Finding the current incarnation of the Republican party to be embarrassingly poised to destroy itself, he threw his lot in with the Democrats and since has become something of an activist, participating in several Democratic campaigns. Despite this partisan activity, he believes that local issues trump national ideological dialogues and should be pursued with reason and evidence rather than passion and hyperbole. His goal with Notify Fort Collins is to provide a one-stop easy resource for local residents to come to their own conclusions about political and government decisions.
An Exploration of Local Fort Collins History, by Maggie Dennis
Maggie is a historian by training and built her career in the museum field. She got my start at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA in the early 1990s. Then she moved to DC to do an internship at the Smithsonian’sNational Museum of American History in 1994. She later earned a master’s degree in history at the University of Delaware and landed a job at the Smithsonian.
Forgotten Fort Collins gives her a new opportunity to learn about Fort Collins and share her passion for what she calls “Nearby History”—the history that surrounds us in the buildings, objects, and people that populate our daily lives. She truly believe that Nearby History is living history—it’s not stuck in the past.
Information about our furry friends in Fort Collins, by Chrysta Bairre
Chrysta is an experienced blogger and speaker, and business professional with over 18 years experience in accounting, human resources, and management. Her personal development blog, Live Love Work, continues to grow readership and has attracted the attention of The Chicago Tribune, Toastmasters International, and the International Association of Administrative Professionals. Chrysta brings her lifelong love of animals and passion for social responsibility to The Scoop Blog network as the blogger for Tails of Fort Collins.
Stories of the people who make up the fabric of Fort Collins, by Kara Thompson
Faces Of Fort Collins is to profile Fort Collins residents to tell their stories and their roles in the community in which they live, work, study, volunteer, raise families, or provide a service or leadership. Whether they be community leaders, business owners, philanthropists, college students, or average Joes/Janes, everyone has a story to tell and Fort Collins is a part of that story.
Kara’s writing background is varied. Her past professional positions include being a newspaper reporter, a writer and editor in Services Marketing at an Air Force base, Communications Director at a small private school, technical writer at a research center at a university, and editorial director and project manager at a marketing and advertising firm. In these positions, she has always appreciated the opportunity to talk to individuals and learn their stories, which relates directly to her goals for “Faces Of Fort Collins.”
Removing the propaganda, politics, and stereotypes while providing educational information about cannabis in Fort Collins, by B.C. Johnson
B. C. Johnson is a fiction writer, freelance journalist, and blogger. Since 2008, he has worked as a freelance writer in a number of capacities, including as a music journalist, restaurant reviewer, and technical writer. He is currently a graduate student at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and his short stories have appeared in journals from Chicago to Delaware.
On Budding Fort Collins, he hopes to spread the word about the benefits of cannabis, the diversity of the people who use it, where to find the best Colorado marijuana dispensaries and strains, and developments within the Colorado cannabis industry, all while learning more about Colorado’s favorite plant through interviews with experts, critical research, and input from community members like you.
