The press never dies, it just changes fonts. How storytelling keeps reinventing itself in Buffalo, NY
I still remember the first time I walked into the Buffalo Rising “office”.
It was the founder’s house in the Elmwood Village. A hacker newsroom with coffee shop vibes. A few writers, designers, and entrepreneurs - laying out the physical newspaper right there on the kitchen table. The hum of desktops, the smell of coffee, the chaos of many conversations happening all at once.
I was there to design some print ads and more importantly bring the paper into the digital age and design their first website. My first real newsroom project -back when “online news” sounded more like an experiment than an industry.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that little website taught me something bigger: storytelling never dies. It just keeps finding new tools.
That’s been Buffalo’s rhythm for more than a century.
This city was once filled with voices. Immigrant weeklies. Union papers. Neighborhood bulletins. Way back when - a guy hunched under a lamp, setting letters one by one. Slow. Careful. Tedious. But anyone with grit could make a paper.
Then the machines came.
Linotype let one operator outpace a crew. Molten lead, clattering keys, lines of type hot to the touch. It was efficient, but expensive. The small shops couldn’t keep up. The big dailies got bigger. The little ones disappeared.
Offset printing made it faster. Phototypesetting made it cleaner. Each shift pushed the ladder higher. Each time, fewer people could reach it.
Whole unions collapsed. Generations of craftsmen out of work. The presses still thundered, but the crowd around them got smaller.
And then came digital.
Suddenly, a kid with a Mac could do what once took a warehouse. The tools were back in everyone’s hands. The economics had flipped. Print wasn’t the prize anymore.
Attention was.
That’s Buffalo’s news story in a nutshell: expand, consolidate, collapse, adapt, repeat.
From the Courier Express folding to The Buffalo News surviving, it’s always been about who has the tech and who has the advertisers.
Now the manual presses are quiet, but the voices? They’re still here.
You don’t grab the morning edition anymore. You check a website.
You scroll Buffalo Rising, see what Elmwood Village Association is posting, hit StepOutBuffalo for weekend plans.
The medium changed, but the mission didn’t. We still want connection. We still want to know what’s happening down the street. We still want to feel part of something bigger.
When I think back to building that first Buffalo Rising site; the janky CMS, the guerrilla style photos, the scrappy team making it all work.
I realize we were just continuing the same tradition that started under those gas lamps a century ago. We just changed fonts.
That’s what Series B is about.
Every era in Buffalo finds its own way to keep the presses running. From the basement print shops of the past to the blogs that defined the early web, this city keeps finding its voice.
Series B is the continuation of that tradition. Buffalo’s next press. The new machinery of storytelling.
But instead of ink and paper, it’s built with code, curiosity, and community.
We’re telling the stories of founders, builders, and business owners. The people reshaping Buffalo from the inside out.
These are stories of risk and reinvention, of small teams making big moves, of the same creative grit that once powered the printing presses.
Since those early days helping Buffalo Rising find its digital footing, I’ve designed hundreds of platforms for people here - from hometown startups that made it big like ACV Auctions to personal passions like Mentor Deck.
The tools keep changing, the pace keeps getting faster, but the need for stories never goes away.
People still want to know who’s building, who’s taking risks, and what’s next for this city.
That's why I was thrilled to be the principal designer for Series B's digital platform. This storytelling initiative is about what's changing right now in Buffalo and the opportunity it will create for our kids.
Series B isn’t just a publication. It’s a glimpse of where Buffalo’s heading.
Same city.
Better tools.
Different ink.
