Question:
Local News Publishers: How do you make it work financially?
How do startup news publishers make an impact – and make money? Among the many local news businesses there are successes to mimic and struggles to overcome.
Who or what will support the continued creation of news and sustain its quality? And how?
Jump in to the conversation below! Looking for background? Feel free to check out the stories of a few publishers featured in this forum. What tips do you have about managing freelancers, selling ads or creating any sustainable revenue stream? What would you like to learn from someone with experience relevant to what you want to try next?
Posted by Journalism Accelerator on February 25, 2012
Topics: Community Distribution Experiments Questions Revenue
Topics: Community Distribution Experiments Questions Revenue
Answers: Remember to refresh often to see latest comments!
149 answers so far.
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Mike Green says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:17 pm
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Steven Waldman says:
March 4, 2012 at 9:14 am
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Steven Waldman says:
February 28, 2012 at 1:15 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 1:29 pm
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André Natta says:
February 28, 2012 at 1:38 pm
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Mike Green says:
March 1, 2012 at 9:45 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:33 pm
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:35 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 1:30 pm
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Hanan says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:24 pm
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:25 pm
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Michele McLellan says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:28 pm
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:30 pm
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Michele McLellan says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:33 pm
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:34 pm
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Michele McLellan says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:35 pm
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Hanan says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:42 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:11 pm
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:15 pm
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm
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Hal Goodtree says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:26 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
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Denise Civiletti says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:07 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:19 pm
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:27 pm
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André Natta says:
February 28, 2012 at 1:29 pm
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Shasta Kearns Moore says:
March 7, 2012 at 7:13 pm
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Nick Wirth says:
March 30, 2012 at 6:16 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:01 pm
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:21 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:23 pm
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Hal Goodtree says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:24 pm
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:35 pm
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Mike Green says:
February 28, 2012 at 5:41 pm
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Carol Shirey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:59 am
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:06 pm
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:11 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:21 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:23 pm
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Lisa Skube says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:39 pm
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Carol Shirey says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:57 pm
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:51 am
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:56 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:57 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:58 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:00 pm
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:02 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:03 pm
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:04 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:05 pm
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:06 pm
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:06 pm
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:07 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:08 pm
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:10 pm
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:12 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:12 pm
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:19 pm
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Hal Goodtree says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:57 pm
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:45 am
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:54 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:04 pm
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:05 pm
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:10 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:37 am
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:43 am
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Michael Mccutcheon says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:58 am
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Debbie Galant says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:36 am
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:41 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:42 am
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Denise Civiletti says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:48 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:50 am
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Michele McLellan says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:25 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:27 am
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:29 am
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Michele McLellan says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:32 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:33 am
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:33 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:47 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:50 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:51 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:56 am
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:01 pm
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:09 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:15 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:20 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:23 am
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:25 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:26 am
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Brian R. Hook says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:27 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:28 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:30 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:34 am
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Michele McLellan says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:34 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:38 am
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:40 am
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wendy weyen wallace says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:43 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:45 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:46 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:49 am
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:52 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:58 am
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:58 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:25 pm
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:28 pm
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:33 pm
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:37 pm
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Michelle Ferrier says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:10 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:16 am
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Michelle Ferrier says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:01 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:04 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:01 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:02 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:06 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:09 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:10 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:11 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:14 am
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Brian R. Hook says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:14 am
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John P Garrett says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:15 am
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dangrech says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:15 am
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Jason Pramas says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:15 am
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Michelle Ferrier says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:16 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:19 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:20 am
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Jeremy Sapienza says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:20 am
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Michelle Ferrier says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:25 am
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:27 am
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Beth Wellington says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:28 am
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Andy Dragt says:
February 28, 2012 at 12:04 pm
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:24 pm
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 3:30 pm
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 10:59 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:03 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:11 am
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:12 am
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Joe Michaud says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:21 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:28 am
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Emily Lowrey says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:33 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:53 am
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Ned Berke says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:59 am
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Emily Harris says:
February 28, 2012 at 10:58 am
| ParticipantsThere is no one-size-fits-all business model for local news publishers. But there is a single philosophy that can help local news publishers succeed: Content is NOT king; it is queen. The point is that community building is king. The content is secondary to the process of creating a user-friendly platform and building sustained engagement of the platform by the local community. That process requires a different philosophical approach that ultimately results in the platform being used to provide local news content to a community that uses the platform for myriad reasons, not necessarily prioritizing news content. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if news is the quintessential reason that unique visitor traffic, pages viewed and time spent on site metrics skyrocket. Print newspapers aren’t concerned with the fact some subscribers pay just to read the comics, weather or sports page. Bottom line is they paid for a perceived value. Bottom line is users will use a platform they value.
“Content is NOT king; it is queen. The point is that community building is king” . I love that — and agree
I’m curious how online community is working these days. I dont mean user generated content, or readers commenting on content — but users interacting with each other. In the olden days, this was done primarily through message boards but Facebook and Twitter have somewhat sucked the life out of some of the traditional communities. But surely there must still be some geographically based online communities that work well.
Steven Waldman, to the contrary, fb has actually created community (a way to stay in touch and share content) if you actually KNOW your fb friends here in Southern Appalachia. I see twitter as more of a way to mnitor breaking news from journalists and to share the same See: http://bethwellington.blogspot.com/2012/02/zen-and-oof-of-journalism-impact.html and http://bethwellington.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-on-sampler.html
I’ve seen Facebook and Twitter be helpful here in Birmingham. We were more successful with Twitter, engaging with folks using the #bham hashtag (even the folks from Bellingham who were wondering what kind of site we were). We also created a weekly Twitter chat called #bhamchat that we’re preparing to re-launch in April. It’s something that folks who used to take part say they’ve missed; the ability to know what some folks think about issues happening in the city and finding out what’s a rumor vs. what’s fact. It also helped build trust so that if they learn of something happening and they don’t think we know, they trust us enough to send a DM or an email with the news tip.
Has anyone used phpFox? http://phpfox.com/ as a platform to experiment with building hyperlocal community engagement platforms?
Thanks everyone, for participating today! We’ll pull out major themes and explore follow up; also track down answers for remaining questions. Comments will stay open on this thread (and it might be a little easier to read through and comment when it’s not live!) Thanks for the feedback on the platform – always helpful.
Join us tomorrow to talk about specific revenue challenges / opportunities for niche content sites. The New England Center for Investigative Reporting and The Lund Report, tracking the health care industry, will be featured, plus business coach Rusty Coats and Bob Buderi of Xconomy. Others we look forward to seeing: Susan Mernit of Oakland Local, David Hirschman from Streetfight, and Robert Cox from Talk of the Sound.
Thanks, Emily. Could definitely use a new interface next time. 🙂
Thanks everyone for your input. I’m actually pretty encouraged.
Thanks, Emily for convening this. Very helpful…too bad Steven Waldman came in so late…
Can someone explain to me why Chicago News Co-op failed at it (and maybe the Bay Citizen too having to partner with the center for investigative journalism) while Texas Tribune is hitting it?
yes… Evan Smith (one of a kind editorial leader) and John Thornton (one of a kind news lover with vision and money and contacts)
That’s a very long answer. One key factor is that Texas Tribune invested early and much in a) business development and b) tech and data, which account for huge amounts of its traffic. Both Texas Tribune and Bay Citizen started with much more money than the Chicago News Coop and the Coop will say it just didn’t have enough to spare from content for business development. But that’s a choice.. Other sites such as MinnPost and Voice of San Diego, started with lesser amounts, were very entrepreneurial about revenue and are making good progress toward being sustainable. Unlike Chicago, these other sites also devote energy to community engagement on and off line. That’s the highly oversimplified answer.
I would agree with Michele that a huge element of the success of the Texas Trib is it’s smart visualization of data, which last I heard accounts for 70 percent of its traffic. Data journalism is an area we all should be exploring. Interactive data maps often have a very long tail.
Here’s a recent KF report that looks at the revenue and sustainability efforts of some of the larger, nonprofit news sites. http://www.knightfoundation.org/publications/getting-local-how-nonprofit-news-ventures-seek-sus
Let me add this to Michele’s comment: Evan Smith is very well respected but in my opinion way underrated in all of this. He knows good content, knows how to brand his medium, and his name sells ads (they call them sponsorships – but they are ads). His good name also helps him attract great talent. If you want to be big time in the online or legacy news space study him and his work.
I agree about Evan. And John’s connections have helped them raise some big donations. These are definitely part of the picture. Their entrepreneurial outlook is the biggest factor, I think.
Thanks a lot guys for the valuable comments.
One thing we haven’t talked about in this money conversation is not spending it in the first place. Where do you pinch pennies and why?
Everywhere. And because it’s the smart thing to do. Do you have to spend money to make money? Abso-freakin’-lutely. However, I want to hear the argument for buying another box of paper clips when it works just as well to fold the corner over.
I’m lucky. I’m an extraordinary cheapskate (genetic). My business manager is not. That means he’s always making purchasing requests, and he has to justify every one to me, and things only get bought if I see a value in it. And, yes, we do fight over paper clips.
My point being that the tension is good, and helps ensure smart investments. Paper clips notwithstanding.
We shy away from giveaways & contests. Both are good marketing opportunities, but can require significant cash and time. Wish I could give away 10,000 t-shirts. Not going to happen this year.
Not so much cash if others pay for the giveaways and co-brand them or even are offered as premiums, such as the npr model…Also there are some giveaways that are really cheap. Solar powered wordprocesser, i.e. pencil. Not sure of the pricing now, but at one time I ordered mugs w. logo for very little. Picked a classy color (cobalt blue) that made them look like they were worth more than they had cost us. Also had a caligrapher do something that could be xeroxed on parchment suitable for framing (and framed for hgh value donors)
I believe local advertising does have value for local businesses, and our experience has been that local businesses are very anxious to advertise online with a local news site. But the site has to offer news & other content people want and need. People often use the word “addicted” when they talk about our site. They say they know they can come to riverheadlocal.com to find out what’s happening when it’s happening. That’s what we set out to do. And it’s working. We are not too different from traditional small community news organizations (ie small community newspapers.) Many successful community newspapers were/are very small companies, often husband and wife endeavors like ours. I believe this gives us an advantage. Also being entrenched in our community, as both residents and journalists,long before we launched our site, helps us maintain relevance. I believe strongly that the future of community journalism is strong.
Denise, one thing that came up in conversations I had with people ahead of this forum was that the expectation of merchants about the impacts of ads. That because you can measure clicks, every ad has to be highly justified – yet they don’t realize the value of exposure.
What do you tell people to expect from their ad?
I have had people calculate clickthroughs on their ads in per-dollar terms, as if they represented direct sales (they did not, ever). I could only think — how many clicks would you get on a newspaper ad? They expect far more for some reason, though our ads were quite inexpensive compared to newspaper ads.
I tell them that they’re connecting with a dedicated group of people who live and work in the area who will appreciate their support a local media outlet. It becomes an issue of getting them out of the “numbers” game and into one that show them how community will help them in the long run. They’ve been told before that it’s a easier way to measure effectiveness of dollars, so part of it is making it a little easier to understand just what that means.
I agree with Jeremy. I think it’s very strange how much advertisers value click-throughs when ALL traditional advertising is simply based on exposure: billboards, television, print. Perhaps this started because Google is such a massive player in the online ad world and they decided to bill by CPMs.
Jeremy and Shasta – Ultimately I think the ability to have detailed performance metrics is one reason why you’re seeing online ads displace offline advertising. If there was as easy a way to measure the effectiveness of traditional ads in prompting consumer action as there is measuring clicks online, I think it would have always been valued above exposure. It’s just easier to measure ROI that way. Obviously different advertisers have different motives; CPM makes sense when the primary goal is to build and strengthen a brand. On the other hand, there’s plenty of occasions when the advertiser is looking to prompt a specific action: an email sign-up, donation, purchase, etc. Click-throughs aren’t a perfect metric, but they do show consumer engagement, which I think is far harder to gauge with traditional advertising.
Here is another question posted ahead of this conversation on our blog from Linda Grist Cunningham.
Let’s make an assumption that an entrepreneurial site can manage only three revenue stream projects at launch. What would be your top three recommendations? What are the “do this first” suggestions and why? What might come at six months? At 12?
We have three products right now: subscriptions to our shopping platform (do-it-yourself or with labor); contests (web and social, but we’re specifically using our contest engine for personal page to business page conversions of fan base); and a social media consulting session that includes a report showing in detail your competition’s social media market share vs. yours along with a publishing schedule/guidance on growing your customer base using social media. Our shopping platform is currently about 90% of our total revenue. The other products are only a few weeks old though and I suspect will combined contribute to 50% of our revenue base within 60 days.
What I like about the true startup mentality is the assumption that in the startup phase you’re trying to find a business model. And you do that by interviewing customers and testing your assumptions. Once you find the business model, you’re in the next phase. So the startup phase of an online news site is trying to figure out what three lines of business are most useful to your local community. Emily has found her three, which may or may not be the same in another community.
Joe, what are tips for evaluating whether one model would work in your community or might not?
At CaryCitizen.com, we pursue (1) Advertising – it’s the gateway for small business (2) Sponsorships – medium companies and organizations can sponsor entire content channels such as Environment; (3) Ancillary business services, principally photography and websites (two things we’re already doing to publish the news site). Key insight: one revenue stream alone will not support your hyperlocal.
Emily, about how to evaluate: tough to answer in a small space! Basically start with some theories, go out and talk with people to test your theories. You may find some of them supported, but more likely your assumptions and theories will change. What’s great is that these are interviewing skills — core skills of journalists.
The second part is seeing whether there is a critical mass of business in the answers you find. Social media may be on everyone’s mind, but are they willing to pay, and how much? And how many like-minded customers are there? You need to test those assumptions also.
1. Subscription model. News is the freemium content, but if I want access to the premium stuff I have to subscribe to get: Daily local deals, live online audience Q&A in the Ask the Mayor (Superintendent, Editor, etc) weekly forum (see Vokle.com), access to the weekly video yard sales, vote and comment on the weekly $100 Talent Showcase, access to local innovative ideas and events, local blogs by subject matter experts, video letters to the editor … and more. Subscriptions tell local advertisers that users are paying to engage in parts of the platform. And local merchants can participate in the rotation of locales where the weekly Man on the Street interviews (or Woman) occur and the daily deals … and more. Rolling out new features each month indicates an active area that understands the desire of the community to engage online in like manner that it does in real life. How many restaurants have held a video cookoff with the Grand Prize featuring the winner on its menu for a week?
One thing we’re trying at The Rapidian (therapidian.org) is a social networking fundraiser. We’re planning a two-week long event that will include a week of education and a second week of contact via facebook and twitter.
Can you provide a few more details either here or through a link?
yes, Carol … sounds interesting … details appreciated …
Carol Shirey, could you provide more info on that, either here or through a link…
Sorry. Something was wrong and I didn’t know my question had showed up. Seems like this platform keeps failing unless I refrresh my browser constantly.
Beth; thanks for the note on platform snafus, sorry for the frustration and appreciate your hanging in with us! Working on this, the dev folks are parsing it out. Folks are also getting error messages due to the volume of comments coming in at the same time. We’ll report back out to you all on how we continue to iterate and improve the platform. This is part of how we hope to continue to find/source new practices by bringing the community together around commonly shared challenges or emerging areas that are bringing incremental success.
We will be starting the educational week of our social media fund drive on April 16. Check out our website then. therapidian.org
Has anyone else tried this approach?
Jeremy wrote something that I think is very provocative in regards to the idea of partnering with legacy media outlets: “Those of us doing this are interested in completely independent journalism. The Times (for example) panders to power; we’re gadflies. And as I said above, papers are tanking. It’s cliche now but true.” I’m interested in taking the temperature of the room. Do you all feel this way?
We’re currently exploring a business and editorial relationship with a for-profit legacy news outlet. I’m skeptical, but we both have strengths and weaknesses that I think complement one another, and I hope it works out for both of us.
For us, we only partner with other local independent media in Birmingham right now. Our big newspaper in town is owned by NewHouse (not in Alabama), so we wouldn’t partner with them.
Ned, Emily, or anyone, can you share any details or advice about negotiating with a for-profit legacy news outlet about sharing revenue?
We’d love to partner with other news outlets to cover a story from different angles, but our community just isn’t there yet on doing that kind of thing.
I actually had never considered it in part because I didn’t know that was an arrangement that was made. I don’t come from a journalism background and neither do the main people in my organization, and we have had no contact with other publications except when they do their own reporting based on our content. Which, yeah, leaves me not quite wanting to reach out.
Our legacy newspaper in Roanoke Virginia has fired good (and award winning) reporters such as environmental writer Tim Thornton for spurious reasons and alienated others (one of whom, Michael Hudson went on to work at the WSJ). They are not a watchdog locally and provide any coverage for civic engagement against monied interests too late to be effective. ( I could cite examples if anyone is interested) They still have a few wonderful reporters but of more of a human interest type, cf Beth Macy who has been a Nieman fellow. Now they have shrunk the coverage from outlying bureau and coverted it to a news release rewrite with a few columns offered by non-journalists being paid serf wages and the rest “donating” content to see it in print. The public NPR station has some local coverage (the aforementioned Tim Thornton ended up there doing human interest stuff.) But it had much more local content before it “professionalized” many years ago.
We will partner with larger news outlets we can get a deal with decent terms. The fact of our independence makes the likelihood of such a deal rather low. But that doesn’t stop us from gamely chatting about it from time to time with bigs in our local majors.
Dan Grech, I’m curious, how much content does your newsroom garner from interaction w. the local community and/or other journalism venues…
Emily: Nope. We’re not there yet. They want to do cross-selling, but I don’t think that’s going to benefit either of us enough. We’re very early in the discussion, and I’m hoping we come up with something new and untried, because I believe that’s what’s required to make it work.
Beth, can you elaborate on this: “The public NPR station has some local coverage (the aforementioned Tim Thornton ended up there doing human interest stuff.) But it had much more local content before it “professionalized” many years ago.” I’m very interested in your perspective…
We have a great partnership with Austin’s NBC affiliate. We let them use portions of our online content on their site with links to our site. And when we have big breaking news we let them have it on their prime news as long as they start it with “From our partners at Community Impact Newspaper” and they give us a logo on air and mention “more at impactnews.com” at the end. Great distribution and great marketing for the site.
Jason Pramas, have you had any success yet in engaging the bigs on anything? If so, what?
Beth, gathering content from our audience (through the Public Insight Network — http://www.miamiherald.com/insight/) and our partnership with the Miami Herald accounts for a good three quarters of our content.
Here’s a good article published last week that outlines the benefits of the partnership WLRN-Miami Herald partnership: http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/02/a-partnership-too-valuable-to-give-up-why-the-miami-herald-and-wlrn-are-sticking-together/ The part I’d encourage you to consider is this one: “Grech said he believes the end of the antenna age could massively disrupt public radio’s business model, and he thinks WLRN’s partnership with the Herald gives radio a stronger hand to play in terms of brand equity and sheer reporting horsepower. For example, WLRN placed an experienced radio reporter in the Herald’s capitol bureau for 20 hours a week. During her first month on the job, Grech says the reporter produced about 30 stories. He credits her productivity in part to her working closely with the Herald’s seasoned political reporters. “I estimate my reporters are two to four times more productive because we work with Herald reporters,” said Grech.
John: can you track the financial benefits of that partnership?
no dollars but it has been so successful that it opens up other opportunities. With other broadcasters. Its a pure marketing play for us. It adds credibility to our organization and it gives us free marketing
yes, Beth, we did bit of content swapping with Boston’s largest weekly newspaper on and off for a few weeks during the rise of the Occupy Boston movement last fall – on an informal handshake basis … but longer term deals with them and Boston’s largest daily haven’t gone past the talking stage yet … we are watched carefully by the rest of the Boston press corps because we cover beats they don’t cover they often … whether that translates to any deals that result in new funding streams for us is an open question …
Newspapers and TV in my area (Raleigh, NC) are toxic. We stay away from them like the plague. They are the enemy (gotcha moments and if-it-bleeds reporting). We do partner with local lifestyle media, buy its more a friendly exchange than anything of real value. Why? They don’t reach our audience (online); they don’t retweet or moderate their Facebook channel. So, in effect, we trade them interactive engagemtn for a print ad. Major media needs to think about partnering with us, not the other way around.
We’ve asked our advertisers to include the subdirectory url for their local shopping site in any print advertising they do for now. That gets them exposure to their products and it gets us exposure. I don’t see any upside to partnering with a print operation for us because our Reps are digital specialists in our market (& most of our print folks in town are not). We do work with a local video production company because we can put that video into a banner spot, or on our shopping platform and have tons of other uses for it ourselves. We only do that because we believe pretty strongly in video though. We just started, so no revenue/model to share on it quite yet. We’ve found though that beyond revenue, customer video deepens engagement on our platforms from an audience perspective.
Jason Pramas, would love to have links to the stories. Good luck w. this trend continuing…
John Garrett, I hate when bigs don’t pay for content. Makes us serfs or worse
Hey Ned, nice to see you! Here’s something I’d love to hear you weigh in on – expansion. When do you know you are financially ready to expand? You did that…
For us there were a number of indicators.
First, Sheepshead Bites was hitting enough of the community that we knew we could build a stable business around it.
Second was revenue. We had some to reinvest. We weren’t rich; I was barely drawing a livable salary, but we built out based on what we could afford. Bensonhurst Bean is nowhere near the point Sheepshead Bites is in term of quality or frequency – but it’s establishing a footprint we can later grow and it’s not losing any money.
That’s an important point for me: only do what you can afford to do, and only do it when you can afford to do it.
That said, another factor was claiming territory. I knew it was a matter of time before someone else hit that neighborhood (we even knew who was thinking it), and we wanted to be first, so we bit the bullet and got it out before anyone else could.
How did you measure “hitting enough of the community”?
Oh hey Ned, I’m a fan.
We know how big the community is. We know what our readership is. We did the math. It was arbitrary, but when you’re confident you can walk into almost any establishment and shout “Hey, raise your hand if you’ve read Sheepshead Bites?” and two out of three hands go up, you’re doing just fine.
This question came in ahead of time on the blog from Micheal Mccutcheon: I’d be interested to know more about how any of the smaller startups are tracking user’s behavior and using the data to better target advertising or daily deals or content, etc. and how that is working out (if it is)
Generally speaking, a site needs large numbers – massive numbers – to make targeting worthwhile. You can do the math pretty easily and see how hard it would be to sell a slice of your audience for a premium. For smaller sites, demographic information is most valuable to tell the story of who your audience is. Good information helps support your pricing.
Thanks for putting up the question and the reply. I wonder if even basic demographic information, maybe coupled with what kinds of content interests users, couldn’t be of some value to local businesses in a way that they would actually pay for…Maybe if the user base is too small, or analytics too imprecise, it still doesn’t work…
Sorry this format isn’t working for me at all. Can’t follow. And we have reports of gunshots in a park and BOLO search. Bye.
I agree about the format. Very difficult to follow.
Thanks for stopping by and for your suggestions of a different format you mentioned to me on the phone. We’ll check it out!
I agree as to format being hard to follow. Check into coveritlive.com. Works very nicely for live interactive conversations.
We have looked at Coveritlive – it’s wonderful but has its own limitations. This is a great example of how useful it can be to share best practices. Thank you.
I think in any revenue discussion – from advertising on a nonprofit to a membership model for a nonprofit – visibility and community engagement pay a key role. We just saw the demise of the Chicago Community News Coop, which had made scant progress on a revenue model in part because it had no buy in from the community (so few donations or members). There is a sweet spot. I’d like to hear from different panelists how they have raised their visibility and whether that has paid off for revenue development.
That seems to be a crucial question – especially for local publishers seeking to raise visibility by sharing content – ie to news networks in Seattle and developing now in Portland. What can you do as a small business owner to make sure visibility pays off in a way that pays the bills?
Michele, I’m curious why the Chicago Community News Coop had no buy in from the local community.
I did not see much evidence that they sought to engage beyond producing journalism. Props to the journalism. But they promised a lot more in terms of engagement on their site and never delivered. Chicago has a very busy online news ecosystem and the newspapers, while struggling, are not crashing. So people had other places to go and I don’t think the News Coop ever really established a unique value proposition in the space.
Here is one take by editor and CEO James O’Shea
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/163721/james-oshea-calls-reporting-on-chicago-news-coops-demise-sloppy-and-inaccurate/
One of the best investments any news startup can make is joining their local chamber of commerce. Some are good some are not so good but for me this was a great investment. The newsmakers of the community are usually very active and new businesses looking to grow their customer base (advertising prospects) are there as well. Time (and money) spent at networking events gives you a chance to cast your vision to people you might not normally meet. You wont get any return on this investment if you dont show up to as many events as you can, however. Being a member alone is a waste of money.
How much of your resources do you put toward ads and how much toward journalism?
The Chambers of Commerce locally have been great for us. We also know who our most active folks who are commenting and engaging with us using social media. I just got finished bagging up a t-shirt and water bottle to send to one of them an hour or so ago. We’re planning a meeting down at our local brewery for our most active fans in the next month, and we’re going to buy them a beer and talk about content and what they’d like to see. The most popular ‘events’ we’ve had so far are: Cash Mobs (getting everyone to shop the same business on the same day to get them an infusion of cash), tweet ups and one big one – we booked the Alabama Shakes to play our launch party about a week before they hit it big. We just loved them, but we’ve been able to share in that love of them with our local fan base who came to the party for free… In terms of social media, we always thank our fans for retweeting and mentioning us, and we respond to their comments on facebook too.
I’ll note that when building an online community, offline relationships drive that in every possible way in my world. We couldn’t do what Patch does and be successful here in Birmingham.
Interesting to read this CoC stuff — am I the only one at an exclusively neighborhood-level publication? We don’t have a Chamber, everything is at the city/borough level and my coverage area straddles two boroughs… not quite an option. Instead, we have relationships with individual business owners (most of them) and contacts at various community orgs. I suppose it’s the same thing but it’s much less official and maybe more difficult to assemble and navigate.
Jeremy, you ain’t the only one. Neighborhood level inner-city is a whole different beast than a town or regional-level. Often times our coverage areas are city-sized within themselves, but they don’t have the institutional infrastructure that provides the basis for a lot of original coverage elsewhere. It means we have to work a lot harder, but our stories, I think, have a hell of a lot more character to them.
Right, this is exactly our experience. We don’t have a CoC or City Council newsletter (I mean, that is relevant), so we have to go shake the branches and rely on tips and our networks. The most frustrating part is our coverage area is many times larger in population than some of these full-on city papers in other parts of the country.
Dan Grech, you have years of experience in public radio; you’ve told me that “people know quality and support it.” But how do you really get them to take out the checkbook?
We have an established member-supported business model, which means that people are generally tolerant of us going on air and begging for money. It’s important to keep in mind that we have a low conversion rate: just 10 percent of our listeners become members. And our audience numbers go through the floor during pledge. But despite this, our business model has proven quite recession resistant. Membership numbers and donations actually have gone up during the current economic crisis, in part because I think listeners value our service even more in a time of economic uncertainty and media retrenchment. And this membership model is really well suited to the social web.
What would a local news site need to do to develop a donation model?
Dan, is 10 percent a low conversion rate for NPR stations in general?
That’s very encouraging.
First, you need to go through the laborious task of becoming a non profit.
Many 501c3 designations for journalism sites are on hold at the moment by the IRS.
That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t be done.
Create indispensable content and rally a fan base of ardent supporters. The indispensable content means providing information and perspectives that address the particular urgent needs of a niche audience. This is most easily accomplished with business news, for instance. Folks in Miami pay for content from Latin Finance online because they need it for their business and there’s nowhere else to access that. Creating urgently needed hyperlocal news content is no small challenge. The other half of the equation is creating fans. This is most easily done, in my experience, through events, where people actually get to see and feel part of the online experience. Creating affinity solely through a digital experience is very very hard.
Events are another potential source of revenue…Who has had success with that?
My recollection is that’s about average. The Station Resource Group has done some good work around this issue. I found this study, for a while back, that calculates the renewal rate at most stations at about 70%. http://www.srg.org/bob/BOBReport.pdf So once you hook ’em, they tend to keep supporting year after year.
The New Jersey Spotlight raises about a third of its $600k annual revenues from events – or rather from corporate sponsorships of their events. This is impressive as NJ Spotlight is only two years old.
I think one of the fundamental lessons that’s emerging is that it’s nearly impossible to make a living solely creating content. If you’re an independent, you need to do things like throw events or sell ads. The conundrum is most of us aren’t in the news business to organize events or sell ads… Increasingly, I feel like news is becoming part of the “gift economy” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy)
I don’t feel that this development bodes well for the future of news, Dan … or for our democracy.
Dan, I think you make a few excellent points — create indispensable content. Engage audience in many ways, including through events (that happen also to raise money!). A great service we could perform for journalism entrepreneurs is to help them determine whether their “good idea” truly does fulfill a NEED that will make them indispensable and give them a chance of engaging their audience.
That promises to be a pretty good revenue boost for us once we get back on our feet. Several local bars asked us to do fundraisers there — organize events and either get booze companies to give cases away or the business itself gives us a portion of the take from the bar that night. We’re even doing them for the Kickstarter — they just pledge the money instead of cutting us a check.
I take a more nuanced view. New media has democratized publishing. Now all of us can be publishers using free or inexpensive tools. It used to be that you needed to own a printing press and buy paper by the ton. On the other hand, new media has also eliminated the advertising monopolies and oligopolies that paid for paper by the ton. So the business model is broken. And the diversion of ad dollars from legacy media to the full online spectrum of media companies means huge amounts of money have been sucked out of news gathering. A huge chunk of the revenue that Google now makes used to go to newspapers… and to hire journalists. But how many journalists does Google employ?
Wendy, in my experience very few people in media — legacy or independent, startup or established — bother to even ask the audience what they want or make any serious attempt to give it to them… beyond producing tabloid content that will draw eyeballs and make you feel dirty after reading it. There are information needs that are going unmet in our communities, and if we fill those needs with indispensable content I believe the support will flow.
totally agree Dan…and would add that distribution of said content is the key to advertising support and success.
I’m with Dan on this — just because the traditional news business model is tanking doesn’t mean NEWS is tanking. It just means more creativity is needed to figure out how to sustain it.
Democratizing publishing would mean that more people had more control over the means of production and the means of distribution in publishing. But, in fact, media consolidation continues unabated. And the resulting multinational media corporations have more and more control over not only the means of production (various web platforms), but also of the internet itself – the primary means of distribution for most of the new entrants to the news production scene that you describe. Which begs the question: what is the role of government in all this? Why isn’t there more of a push from publishers for public funding for news media production in the public interest? Foundations don’t seem willing or able to step up to the plate here. The general public doesn’t pay to pay these days in a down economy. And ads are often a non-starter. If democracy requires an informed citizenry, then why can’t government funds be allocated and disbursed by local non-partisan funding boards for news production?
Media consolidation continues, but of the type of media hardly any of us are involved in. The crappier big papers become, the more market share there is for people on the community level doing good work. There is no role for government in this; after all, a big problem in media is far too much deference to those in power. Government funding means government control.
Again, ads alone may not be working anymore. But engaging directly with readers and appealing to their sense of community may work. Its harder to fake interest than just selling ads, but isn’t that a good thing?
Government funding absolutely does not automatically mean government control. Would you say entities like the National Film Board of Canada are all creatures of the Canadian government? Or for that matter NPR and PBS (understanding that most of their public funding has been gradually shut off by right-wing attacks since their inception)? Like any other kind of funding there are trade-offs, but if there is significant democratic community control we’ll end up with a far more robust news ecology than we have now. Rather than continue to subject ourselves to the caprices of the cult of the “market.”
[grrr, this interface is so infuriating! here’s the corrected version of the above post] Government funding absolutely does not automatically mean government control. Would you say entities like the National Film Board of Canada are all creatures of the government that funds them? Or for that matter NPR and PBS (understanding that most of their public funding has been gradually shut off by right-wing attacks since their inception)? Like any other kind of funding there are trade-offs, but if there is significant democratic community control we’ll end up with a far more robust news ecology than we have now. Rather than continue to subject ourselves to the caprices of the cult of the “market.”
Democratic control, to me, comes from responding directly to the needs/requests of our consumer/partners to whom we appeal for funding. Not from being swallowed by a journalism bureaucracy with top-down rules and a set of hoops to jump though to get its funding. Your example of fund disbursement by some hyperlocal councils is a nice thought, but extremely unlikely. And you’d have to make sure not to piss THEM off. Public-choice considerations apply.
Democratic control in my example would mean public funding, local control. McChesney, Nichols and many other have a lot of other good examples of this kind of idea – some drawn from things already done in the US over the last 200 years.
So Jeremy, you were doing this in addition to a full-time job. I know what you mean about reaching that tipping point…when you need additional partners and money to get to the next level. What do you think was more important: money, talent, reach or a combination of all three?
Yeah, I work full time, though it’s also for a news website, and at home. Reach was never an issue — everyone reads the site. The question was how to monetize that. I have spoken to other local newspaper publishers, from papers that are decades old, in neighborhoods with much more money than mine, who say the entire model is dying. With money, you can find the right talent. But how to get enough money?
Emily, could you introduce all the featured speakers so we can access their sites?
John Garrett runs Community Impact Newspapers in Texas, Dan Grech is news director with WLRN in Miami, Emily Lowrey runs Magic City Post in Birmingham, and Jeremy Sapienza runs BushwickBK in Brooklyn.
Click on their pictures and you’ll see their profiles, with more information and links to sites.
Most of the ads actually came to us — nobody ever really had time to go out and hustle for ads. Occasionally I would mention it and people would sign up. The revenue helped us expand coverage but we grew to a sort of interim size that needed more revenue to get to a a place I felt would make it a more complete publication.
So, already having a full-time job and seeing no way to get more ads, I made the hard decision to just shut it down. I was fried.
Did you try hiring someone to sell ads? I know other publishers use outside ad platforms to manage as well – anyone want to share what their experience has been?
John Garrett, you come to the news business from advertising. What might you suggest to Jeremy?
I think you make a great point, Jeremy. As hyperlocal publishers, it’s tough to find time to get everything done. As humans, we’re more naturally drawn to what we love to do – and for most people, that’s not selling (or if it is selling…then chances are you may be working for a big operation versus a start-up considering money is a top motivator). In the initial couple of start-up weeks when it was only me, I divided up my day into parts (and also my week) and schedule time to get all the necessary functions completed. Monday mornings were a bit of catching up before diving into sales calls and then Tuesday was all day setting appointments for the remainder of the week. On Wednesday, I worked on community building and went on appointments and Fridays were for planning the next week/generating ideas/learning. Each day had elements of the total job, but I tried to keep my focus on that particular day on the task at hand. It’s not easy by any means though…
I did, several times. I didn’t have the money to hire someone on salary, but I was appealing to unemployed people I knew in the neighborhood to sell the ads for a 20% commission. I had been through, say, 6 people over 3 years, and sold exactly two ads and made maybe $250 total. So, wasn’t working for me — again, I think we had enough money to just barely run the publication but not to get to a good, sustainable size.
Right, and considering many of the business owners in my neighborhood barely even know what the internet is, let alone that people get their news on it and more, why they should pay to put a little graphic on it — clicking through to what?? — it’s even harder.
I currently use Google Adsense.
In the past I have learned that you need a certain level of traffic before selling ads directly.
I think it takes a unique person to be able to be able to deliver quality content the reader wants and be able to sell to local businesses. What I have seen in the local online news space tells me it requires this kind of person to make it work. I dont think local news startups can afford to hire quality journalists AND quality salespeople AND make money. But if someone with a journalism background is passionate enough about their mission I would encourage them to try to get over the sales reluctance. People buy people.
Jeremy, did you ever look into partnering — on the business or editorial side — with legacy publishers?
I had the same problem when I ran a small print national back in the mid-90s. If you can’t pay business staff – and you need to run the journalism side of the operation to make sure you have good content – it’s best not to waste time with volunteer sales staff in my experience. They virtually always suck. Which is why our main problem remains finding extra money up front to hire a business staffer to jumpstart our ad sales operation.
So, I’ve found that “dating” — sourcing new talent as partners, salespeople, writers, etc. is incredibly time consuming. And as Jeremy suggests, at times not that fruitful…especially when you’re not offering up front money. So how does a sole proprietorship get past that point?
Hey Dan, no. Those of us doing this are interested in completely independent journalism. The Times (for example) panders to power; we’re gadflies. And as I said above, papers are tanking. It’s cliche now but true.
We’re bootstrapping as well. We placed ads on college job boards and hired recent graduates into commission-only roles. This was a good target for us because Gen Y is more likely to live at home with their Parents, and more likely to work on passion projects. We have a pretty baked out sales training program, so after a Rep goes through that then they have monthly goals, sales pipelines and attend regular meetings, etc. I will say, though…learning experience for me. I got the whole ‘building culture’ piece, bu I wasn’t prepared to work solely with Gen Y’s like I am now. It takes some getting used too since I come from a 1st generation college-student, working class background and I’m just wired differently because of that. We’re seeing lots of progress and some pretty good revenue now, but I know we have a long road ahead of us.
Exactly right, Michelle — all I have is the promise that you can go out and make free money talking to people in your free time. But that’s not enough.
Can you describe your sales training program? Do you offer incentives after a certain level of sales? Did you start with base or just commission?
I worked on a print community newspaper and now have a blog I’ve never monetized (http://bethwellington.blogspot.com) I think there are some lessons from the former that could apply. First, we were a collective, not a single proprieter. Second, we traded off on the more non-journalistic jobs, such as selling ads and writing fundraising letters (we were a non-profit). Third we had a presence in the local community through social events such as potlucks and with local merchants, since we shopped locally and volunteered at other community projects with them. Fourth, for our advertisers we appealed to those who were engaged civically engaged (there were those who supported us even though they were politically conservative because they believed in supporting free speech) Fifth, we reached out to an audience beyond our locality who still had interest in our locality with an annual fund drive that touted our accomplishments (including scooping the daily on several occasions.)
BTW, all of us had full-time jobs…
At therapidian.org we have taken a broad approach offering categorical sponsorship, sitewide underwriting as well as a more traditional “banner ad” type product. I’m the “sales guy” and though I received a base pay to start and ongoing advances against commissions, my compensation will eventually be all commission. A sales pipeline takes time and hard work to build and you will need to provide that time (via some sort of compensation) or you will not keep a sales person long enough to see success. We are 4 to 5 months in and are just now seeing results at all levels and I have many accounts that I expect to take 6 months to close (site wide underwriters waiting for mid year budget renewals). We’re also very interested in what Emily Lowrey is up to but some folks around these parts have a sort of allergic reaction to the shopcity look and feel… no easy answers.
I had an allergic reaction to it as well, so we branded it with our own look.
Michelle, we’re commission only right out-of-the gate. We’re currently at 20% straight commission, but we are modifying our model to increase commissions to 25% when Reps hit pre-determined revenue targets by Rep with another bonus if the group makes their goal. We do the full enchilada: sales prospecting, lead generation/referral, needs analysis (consultative selling), sales call, closing & account maintenance. In addition to that, we do product-specific and industry training. For example, we don’t sell a daily deal but we all know about the daily deal sites locally and nationally and the upsides and downsides to them. We also have a lot of training and conversation around servicing small business customers, and we do a few other onboarding things to build our culture in general. Our Reps also understand a lot about social media tie-ins to digital marketing campaigns, and we do that through group training during our sales meeting each week. We have a learning culture.
And to Emily Lowrey – I’m curious whether you see yourself as running a shopping site or a news site primarily. (Would you mind first describing the unique set up of Magic City Post?)
Magic City Media has a local news site, MagicCityPost.com, and hundreds of local shopping sites all over the Southeast. Of the shopping sites, only ShopBirmingham.com, ShopHomewood.com and ShopMountainBrook.com are live now. We worked on the shopping sites first, and now we’re just about to launch our full-fledged Magic City Post site with additional revenue products that integrate in with our shopping site now available for purchase on the news site. To answer your question…It really depends on the time of day. I consider myself a Publisher versus a straight Journalist, so I have my hands in both. Before this session, I was working on a story. After this session today, I have a shopping site consultation. Even though we’re soft news, we are editorially independent of our revenue operations – or we do our very best to be. So long as a story fits Magic City Post, we don’t give any preference as to who it came from (advertiser or not).
You are already expanding – what’s the trick to adding sites in a profitable way?
This seems to be a true challenge for many journalists considering a news startup: the idea of switching hats between journalism and business, not just day to day, but sometimes hour to hour. Any tips for how you make this work for you personally?
Emily Lowery addresses this question within the thread starting with the post “Most of the ads actually came to us”…
Emily, I think it’s because we understood that it some cases…just selling banners is that ‘customers for my products’ strategy that doesn’t work so well anymore. We found a problem in the market, and we offered a solution for it. Local businesses were largely not online, and when they were, they were fighting it out alone. By getting them to band together under one domain that we market in the community, then we helped them get more customers (& even sales online)…and we helped the community keep tax revenue on products that were found online and then purchased in-store. Going at it at that angle opened us up to deeper conversations about facebook personal page (for your business) conversion to an actual business page through contesting and a whole bunch of other products. I think if you go at it at that angle of just getting financial support for your journalism, that you’ll struggle. If you find a problem to solve though, you’ll get the support you need and flourish.
Joe, for me managing time and energy is a daily struggle still. Some days, I am on my game like nobody’s business. Others, I’m just plain exhausted. I miss the “atta girl’s!” I used to get working for someone else. Now, when I complete a project, it comes from a way more pure place though…and I get to work on things that matter to the future of my business…so that’s always awesome. When it’s your responsibility to motivate yourself, it becomes about far more than just organization of your day, but about keeping your energy up. I’ve changed my diet and only eat locally-grown foods now, and I walk around the park and meditate. Purposefully taking care of myself and also setting a schedule for certain types of tasks has helped. For example, I do the books on Saturday mornings. I’m alert, well-rested, and when I’m done…it’s a reward to go out and have a few hours to do something non-work related. There’s no way I can get my books done during the week when my folks are here.
Other publishers: would you say the intensity of the work is a bigger hurdle than the revenue?
I don’t understand this question. Obtaining the revenue is at the root of the intensity of the work.
Hello everybody – welcome to the JA forum! This is to trade ideas and experiences on how to increase financial support of new journalism ventures. Today we’re talking about local news sites; tomorrow more niche sites. I hope we can emerge with a sense of best practices to increase revenue to build on and share around the field.
Jump in anytime and post what you want to know or tell us about what’s worked for you and what’s not. I’d like to start off with a question for Jeremy Sapienza, who is right in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to restart a local news site in Brooklyn, BushwickBK.
Jeremy, you’ve told me it just got too hard to sell ads last year before you closed the site. What was too hard?