What this is
A desk on a Calgary street.
calgaryblog.com is where a Calgarian opens a blog and writes all week, under their own name, at an address in this city.
Not a magazine. Not a media kit. Not a personal brand. You sign in with the account you already use on any calgary*.com, you name the desk, you say which block you write from and which language you write in, and it is open. Nobody reviews it first. The first post can go up the same night.
Neighbourhood over niche
Forest Lawn writes Forest Lawn. Bowness writes Bowness. A welder writes the shop. A parent writes the school gate. A first post is one block: a rink at 6 a.m., a night shift, the 17 at 11:40, a job you hate. Not what you want Calgary to learn from you. What happened, where, in the words you use at the kitchen table. Tagalog, Punjabi, Cantonese, Spanish, Arabic, Tigrinya, Ukrainian, English. Titles do not have to be English to live here.
The URL stays in Calgary
Substack rents you a street on their map. calgaryblog.com is held by Fat Monk, a Calgary platform co-op, not investor-owned. Your byline lives at calgaryblog.com/your-name. Leave every other platform tomorrow and the address is still here.
No claps, no notes, no algorithm
Readers who want your posts ask for them, and when you publish they get an email. That is the whole distribution. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and only your desk gets the address.
Friday is the paper
The blog is the rest of the week. The Calgary Newsletter goes out Friday from calgarynewsletter.com. Two products, one city. Nothing written here is scraped into it. When a post is worth the paper you can offer it and the paper picks; that hook is coming, not here yet.
Free, and the Pass
Free to open a desk and write. The Network Pass is the city pass for every calgary*.com. It is not a paywall on your blog and it never sits between you and the publish button.
Dusty
Dusty is the network’s Calgary concierge. He can point you to a desk, a block or a bus. He does not write the blog, he does not approve posts and he does not touch publish. A person writes.
The one rule
Be a real person in this city writing about a real block. That is the only review there is, and it happens after the fact, not before you write. Questions: jordan@fatmonkmedia.com.