A young throw-back journalist tackling the news biz
Changing journalism
A journalism start-up: Should I go for it?
I could look for a job at traditional news organizations. But as I read over the Knight News Challenge results, I thought about what I would do if I could get a little funding. Here’s my idea for a nonprofit start-up I’d like to create. Should I go for it?
The Idea
The Southern Online News Network will be a nonprofit incubator for hyperlocal news startups in underserved locations around the Southeast. The organization will start slowly, but will eventually provide journalist-entrepreneurs who wish to launch news sites the robust support they need as they get off the ground.
The infrastructure will start small. The point of this is to keep the support needed from the Knight Foundation for this project limited to two years. After the initial funding, the money needed to keep the project going and expand will be self-generated. The initial modest grant will show positive results across the region.
For the first year, the core team will involve three people: a journalist, a grant writer and an advertising director. As the journalist, I will be responsible for building the site’s content, both breaking news, trend stories, photos, video and standalone database projects with a long shelf life. I will also work to create a community around the site, both online and in person. I will interact directly with readers and become a presence at community events. I will in essence be the public face of the news organization.
The grant writer will assist in becoming a presence iProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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the community, but will also focus on securing philanthropic funding for the project. This will take two forms: direct reader contributions and grants from organizations dedicated to increasing the news service to small communities. The reader support will be collected both online, in person and through the mail, and the grant writer will be responsible for overseeing its collection and record keeping associated with that. He or she will also seek out and apply for grants from other organizations, from both those who advertise their grant processes and those who have no standardized process but who might be interested in supporting our endeavor.
The advertising director will create and sell the ads that will make this project sustainable. He or she will focus on innovative ways of advertising, shying away from CPM models and standard banner ads. Initially, the ad director will focus on local advertisers but will make the transition to national advertisers (through pitching widgets and other user-customizable ads). The advertising director will handle sales and collection, and the required documentation for the money received.
After the success of this model has been established, the Southern Online News Network will truly be born. The process we followed will be documented and packaged as a sort of “tool kit” for creating a local news site. The SONN will take applications for a news entrepreneur seeking to launch a site in their town. The SONN will offer a salary that will ensure the journalist will be able to commit to the site, and the ad director and grant writer will work to make the site profitable. As long as the news sites desire to receive support from the SONN, revenue beyond what is needed to pay the journalists will be retained by the SONN to pay for the cost of our services. At any point, the journalists can decide to break ties with the SONN to pursue their ventures independently.
As the venture grows, it will open up the core staff of the SONN (including me) to support and pursue journalism that will benefit the entire South. The SONN will launch a site that will focus on broader news that affects the region and writes the new chapter of the region’s development. All pieces published on the SONN site will be available to its member sites.
The SONN will specifically focus on the economic disparities present throughout the South. Urban areas have continued to enjoy prosperity while adjacent rural areas are still mired in poverty. The SONN will seek to illuminate these struggles, find their cause and present solutions that will influence lawmakers.
Why now?
As the traditional news industry has suffered from contractions, it has created both the market for these sites and the labor force needed to build them.
Around the South, communities have grown along the outskirts of the big cities. These towns have the technological savvy to desire an online news source, but are not being adequately served by the traditional news organizations based in the metropolitan areas. This news void has yet to be filled.
At the same time, bad business decisions and immobile management have created an exodus of journalistic talent (forced and unforced) from traditional news organizations, particularly newspapers. These people have the ability to report on a small town and the desire to seek new outlets for journalism. But they also are wary of sinking time into creating a local news site that could take months before seeing a profit. The SONN will help the journalist provide for his or her family while they launch the new venture, thus eliminating the primary obstacle to creating a local news source.
The SONN fills the void for both underserved communities and journalists seeking to practice their craft.
Why me?
Growing up in a small town in North Carolina, underserved by Raleigh’s News and Observer, I know what these communities need, and therefore can create the infrastructure that will serve them. I have many years experience reporting in small towns, and through work with major metro newspapers, I’ve gained the knowledge needed to find the data sets needed to provide permanent services to these small towns.
I’m a tech-savvy young journalist who gets the Web and how to build a community around content. Through my direction, even the most Luddite of journalists will be able to learn how to best utilize the power the Internet offers journalism to best serve our readers.
Tags: advertising director, grant writer, Journalism, Knight Foundation, local news site, news entrepreneur, North Carolina, Online News Network Discussion
9 comments for “A journalism start-up: Should I go for it?”
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© 2009 dunn, reporter. 
There are a lot of pros and cons to starting a non-profit, and it's generally a lot more formal and a lot more paperwork that many realize. The money doesn't fall off trees, but if you have a good proposition and you're committed, it may have big advantages for you. IMHO, one of the key ingredients to success is having 3… people who want it as bad as you do, or at least want to support YOU.
It's typically something where you can test the waters - talk to the people you'd be asking for money from and people whose support you'd need-those guys' thoughts are a better indicator of whether it's a good idea in the long run-though not to be taken as a firm predictor. If you really want to make it happen, any idea with legs is doable.
The mechanics of starting one are handleable - smart people with some business savvy can figure that out from sources like ours at non-profittoolbox.com and others.
I know there are a lot of technical resources available, like ReportingOn, Publish2 and the EveryBlock source, but the gap I see is needing a Chief Technical Officer. Part of the model SONN will need to establish is using as much off-the-shelf, open-source solutions as possible. You'll also want to free your reporter up to not worry about the particulars of server maintenance, API changes and data munging. The CTO's emphasis should be making sure the technical resources are in place for the reporter and the ad director.
As SONN gets larger, what the CTO has in place becomes a list of best-practices to roll-out to each "franchise."
Andrew, you read my mind. I had a very similar idea, just not targeted for the South, naturally. Remind me to tell you more.
Is there any reason why this shouldn't be a national network?
Also, have you dived into rjicollab.ning.com yet? It's for entrepreneurial journalists, and I've always been meaning to dive in but never quite get around to it.
Ambitious! I think it's a great idea — especially the part about hiring an advertising director who can figure out a way to really grab people's attention. Banner ads don't work, and your site needs that revenue to survive. I'm interested to see what you come up with.
I love the idea of doing this regionally. Like you said, you have a clear idea of what small-town southern news needs. You'll have to narrow down which states are part of the "southeast" (harder than you'd think) and find likeminded tech-savvy journalists to deal with reporters in those areas if you want to make this work. You also need to determine who will be in charge of copyediting, fact-checking, et cetera.
You shouldn't have a huge problem finding reporters, especially considering your connections with college journalists online. This would be a great way for those students to get their work published as well. I think you've got some great ideas here. Best of luck.
There must be something in the water — I've been thinking many of the same thoughts this summer.
Between Andrew's SONN idea and similar fledgling models cropping up around the country, I'm having visions of a resilient, bottom-up news network built by a kickass alliance of forward-thinking journalists. The "local" aspect is key, though. Like Kelli says below, local journalists know best how to cater to the needs of their communities.
I wrote a little about the advantages of a bottom-up news network a couple months ago, possibly relevant to this discussion:
http://jackiehai.com/2009/05/20/resilience-econom...
Andrew, Suzanne, if you guys go for it, let's keep in touch!
Sounds pretty awesome, but I think that means you need to learn how to shoot.
I can help
I don' t know if you've seen growthspur.com, is it similar to what you had in mind?
Hey Andrew and all,
I agree with Nathan on the need for a CTO. CTO plus design and UX in one person would be best, and those can be found, especially in your area. I hear lots of talk about front end development vs. back end, with back end skills being more rare and crucial. A good back end means your writers can easily access, reuse, consult and curate stuff from your database, and your advertising person has other products to sell from that database. I still don't quite understand the distinction between front end and back end when I hear folks talk about it, so maybe this helps in the definition: http://bit.ly/k3Ycb
Perhaps you could combine your advertising/grant people into one person at first. And advertising and grants might not be enough of an income source long term. Would you go as far as taking money from a local government to cover or disseminate information for them? Is that much different than the legal ads and special mailing rates?
David Boraks of davidsonnews.net just hired a publisher, to free himself up from the business side. I think that's a strong indication that the money person is key. http://bit.ly/4vdSE8
Another lesson from David's experiment and other for-profit ventures: While many people say nonprofit is a pain, and you relinquish or share control with a board, the reaction and suspicion ( http://bit.ly/kOOgE ) of some grassroots folks to for-profit companies entering this space makes me think that nonprofit status has lots going for it, especially if you plan to ask anyone in communities to contribute content for free. In addition, lots of foundation grant money from different sources beyond Knight is out there and perhaps more available to a nonprofit.
And when I read the Washington Post quoting an investigation by the Project on Government Oversight at http://bit.ly/R0AXU, it makes me think that independent nonprofits will have a key role in information now and in the future. POGO is also open and transparent about its funding sources.
The News Challenge has emphasized long-term sustainability of projects in the past, but maybe that doesn't necessarily mean being a for-profit company that relies heavily on advertising.
And re: growthspur.com and others like neighborlogs.com: Many folks are entering that space with businesses based on franchise or freemium models. I'd say this proposal has to be clearly different.
Good luck!
Hey Andrew,
I agree with Nathan on the need for a CTO. CTO plus design and UX plus back end in one person would be best, and those can be found, especially in your area. I do hear lots of talk about front end development vs. back end, with back end skills being more rare and crucial. A good back end means your writers can easily access, reuse, consult and curate stuff from your database, and your advertising person has other products to sell. I don't always understand the distinction between front end and back end when I hear folks talk about it, so maybe this helps in the definition: http://bit.ly/k3Ycb
Perhaps you could combine your advertising/grant people into one person at first. And advertising and grants might not be enough of an income source long term. Would you go as far as taking money from a local government to cover or disseminate information for them? Is that much different than the legal ads and special mailing rates?
David Boraks of davidsonnews.net just hired a publisher, to free himself up from the business side work. I think that's a strong indication that the money person is key. http://bit.ly/4vdSE8
Another lesson from David's experiment and other for-profit ventures: While many people say nonprofit is a pain, and you relinquish or share control with a board, the reaction and suspicion ( http://bit.ly/kOOgE ) of some grassroots folks to for-profit companies entering this space makes me think that nonprofit status has lots going for it. In addition, lots of foundation grant money from different sources beyond Knight is out there, and being a nonprofit might make that money more available.
And when I read the Washington Post quoting an investigation by the Project on Government Oversight at http://bit.ly/R0AXU, it makes me think that independent nonprofits will have a key role in information now and in the future. POGO is completely transparent about its funding sources.
The News Challenge has emphasized long-term sustainability of projects in the past, but maybe that doesn't necessarily mean being a for-profit company that relies heavily on advertising.
And re: growthspur.com and similar businesses like neighborlogs.com: Many businesses seem to be entering this space using freemium or franchise models. This project needs to be clearly different, and I'm betting you can make that so.
Good luck!