The well documented decline in newsroom capacity at local newspapers has lots of journalists scratching their heads... It also has lots of journalists and businesspeople scratching the surface to see what is underneath.
In early 2009, Leonard Witt won a $1.5 Million grant from the Harnisch Foundation to start the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. One of their projects, Community Supported Journalism Northfield, is a pilot project that is exploring the potential of small local news operations. A Representative Journalism (Rep J) reporter has been assigned to the Northfield area to report on local issues through her blog. The concept is to create a community of independent reporters, citizen journalists, community members, and media organizations that collaborate to decide which stories are relevant.
The funding is to come from voluntary payments of members of the community. While it is far from assured that revenues will actually be sustainable, this model has distinct advantages over the Miami Herald experiment that failed earlier this year. In Northfield, funders will have input into the content of the local media: suggestions, meeting times/invitations, photos, etc. Second, with a much smaller city, there is a good possibility that the online community can actually strengthen local ties between leaders and citizens. Thus, the voluntary payment model is not just pasted on top of the old newspaper model, it is actually creating new value in local news.
Another group that is experimenting with "crowdfunding" of local news is spot.us located in larger cities in California. They use a different, and perhaps more appropriate model for generating contributions in larger cities. Journalists propose a story, and solicit funding from people who would like to see that story created. This model borrows heavily from the successful donation models of donors choose and kiva. There are several draw backs as I see it though... sensationalist and politically charged articles might be easier to fund, time sensitive stories are less likely to receive funding in time, and there will be a lower volume of completed stories.
Finally, a Google Advertising Operations executive, Tim Armstrong, has backed a site called Patch. The company is dedicated to creating participatory communities in the suburbs as the metropolitan newspapers cut back operations on their peripheries. Patch has a centrally located staff in New York City that designed and operates the common platform of each communities' "patch" (San Ramon, CA and Garden City, NY). There is a small professional staff in each community, and non-staff members can comment or post events to the calendar. Funding will come primarily from advertising (Google Executives in Advertising Ops are reportedly good doing that). With centralized sales and operations, no print overhead, and the economies of scale in promoting a patch network, the site has a fighting chance to provide local news coverage.
Check out these three options for local news, and let me know what you think of the format of the site, or the viability of the business model. Hyperlocal news has great promise, and the race is on...
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