http://www.newshare.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=12.69.205.3&feedformat=atomIVP Wiki - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T19:29:50ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.31.1http://www.newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-wrapup&diff=4214Chicago-block-wrapup2010-09-25T13:51:23Z<p>12.69.205.3: /* What is something I’ve learned over the last day and a half?= */</p>
<hr />
<div>erk<I>This wiki is running notes by [http://www.rjionline.org/fellows-program/densmore-b/index.php Bill Densmore] of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute on the proceedings of the event [http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php "Block by Block,"] bringing together some 70 local online news community (LONC) operators from around the U.S. and Canada. </I> <br />
<br />
QUICK LINKS: <br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Thursday's summit was [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cnm2010 #cnm2010]<br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Friday's gathering is [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23bxb2010 #bxb2010]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/registration/livefeed.php LIVE VIDEO STREAM]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php BLOCK BY BLOCK HOME PAGE (other links)]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-tagcloud LONC tag cloud -- the needs/issues]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-thursday Reporting on the Chicago news ecosystem]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-friday Friday morning: Building engagement]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-wrapup Friday wraup]<br />
<br />
==Ideas starting the wrapup session== <br />
Let them know you are a small business too . . . volunteers and contributors – How to attract volunteers and keep them engaged. Don’t let them fall off the face of the earth. . . . Link to your sources; be transparent about changes; truth squading in forums. <br />
<br />
==An interest group for local online news communities at ONA?== <br />
<br />
*Discussion in one break out about forming a interest group within the Online News Association to advance the work of Local Online News Communities (LONCs). The mission of the interest group, according to breakout co-moderator Bill Densmore, includes these words: Legitimize, Innovate, Represent, Train, Grow, Standards, Ethics, Communication, Collaboration, Network, Share ideas, Catalyze. Membership should be community based and indigenous, and be people not corporations. So an editor or reporter at Patch.com join, but AOL couldn’t. NEXT STEPS: A meetup around the ONA meeting in Washington, D.C.; establish a listserv. <br />
<br />
<br />
==What is something I’ve learned over the last day and a half?==<br />
<br />
David Boracks, North Carolina – The relationship with your advertisers can be part of your community engagement. “Putting you arm around them, not in an unseemly way from a journalistic standpoint, but as part of the community.”<br />
<br />
Anthony Moor, Yahoo – He learned what people in the room need. Analytics, knowing about your audience, networking, and networking to advertisers, informing policymakers, training. <br />
<br />
Speaker: “We need to help disrupt Chicago government a little bit -- a little pressure on City Hall to be more open.” <br />
<br />
Jason Primas, OpenMedia boston – Online news communities are definitely now a community of interest. “We are definitely definable.” <br />
<br />
Jay Rosen: “I call that entrepreneurial atomization overcome.” <br />
<br />
===Best practices I learned, assignments for someone else===<br />
<br />
*Susan Mernit: Hope springs eternal. “I’m impressed by the passion and hopefulness of everyone who came and how much we all want to make it work . . . we really, really need each other. We are trying to do something that is really hard and we don’t come from a revenue background.” Hopes to stay together for the next Block by Block. <br />
<br />
*Peter Stark (CHECK): All we’ve heard about is advertising for revenue. “There is another way to generate revenue.” Users should be paying for your content and we should be thinking outside the box. “Advertising is basically an evil thing. There is an opportunity now to not shake hands with the devil . . . I hope people come up with some new ideas to do it.” <br />
<br />
*Rosen: “I totally agree with that. We need to find other sources besides advertising . . . directly from subscribers is one. That’s the Consumer Reports model . . . they have a great deal of power and authority. We should be thinking of that as well.” <br />
<br />
*Chuck Welch, Lakeland Local, Fla. -- After listening to everything he things he wants to have sponsorships on his website, not just ads, or perhaps not even ads. “We haven’t talked a whole lot about what it is that we do – the journalism that we do and the potential conflicts that advertising sales create.” <br />
<br />
*Lia LaHood, SF Public Press – Learned how much diversity in practice there is within the local online news community. They are doing it without advertising. “We are a minority within a minority and I would like to know how you have been dealing with the challenges of staying ad free.” The same conflicts come with foundation money and there are challenges with mission creep by changing the shape of your business to confirm to funder’s interests. <br />
<br />
*Jay Rosen: “There is no innocent solution. Every solution compromises you in some way.” <br />
<br />
*Andrew Whitacre, MIT: A lot of people learn best when they asks questions of people who know nothing about what they do. Try talking to people in your community about how they have been successful. <br />
<br />
*Teresa Wippel, MyEdmondNews (Washington state): Based on the advice we got from Howard Owens – She has ideas for new targets for advertising. “I am going to tell her to start with those businesses who are absolutely the most respected in the community. That’s the best advice every that it makes total sense it is going to beget other advertisers.” <br />
<br />
*Jay Rosen: Of these groups: “Every single element of their success is dependent on the quality of their relationship with the community . . . which is very different from metropolitan journalism.” <br />
<br />
*Barbara Iverson, Chicago Talks at Columbia College: Has been using Kachingle. You can try it and use it on your site. “It is an interesting alternative. If enough people put Kachingle on their sites and enough people want to support good journalism it could be worth while.” <br />
<br />
*Howard Owens: There are a group of passionate people here about local. The people who are aren’t here at those who really believe in online news but don’t believe local matters. Why are you doing local? “To me the local community is the foundation of democracy and over the last 40 years our local community has become less and less engaged. I believe this is about bringing about that local democracy . . . communities with locally owned businesses have higher graduate rates, are healthier, don’t be skeptical about a key part of your local community, they are the most engaged, give the most donations, support the most charities.” <br />
<br />
*Ben Ilfeld, Sacramento Press: “I’m doing local because I like transformative stories. The ability to change something in my life.” Academia is doing a good job of getting the word out that people should be talking about local news. “I want people to study how effective are about what we do and find which things we can innovate on.” He would like deep research done on our effectiveness.<br />
<br />
*Joy Mayer RJI – She is defining engagement and can we tell whether it is effective or not. @MayerJoy <br />
<br />
*Participant: “I’m doing it because I used to work for a newspaper and the newspapers in my community aren’t doing the job anymore the way it needs to be done.” <br />
<br />
*Eric John Abrahamson, Black Hills Knowledge Network: On the local level it is hard to build a new business model. There is rising demand for quality information, but an unserved market. <br />
<br />
*Participant: An assignment for geeks: See a way for local bloggers and producers to such in structured, relevant data that would pair nicely with a blog post or some news item or piece of content they are able to create. <br />
<br />
*Susan Mernit: “I’m doing Oakland Local because I want to prove that media has become an effective forum of social change.” They organized Oakland Local around food, development, environment, identity, arts, education and justice. The site is a matrix that is about a place and three or four critical issues. <br />
<br />
*Lisa Williams: Don’t just pay attention to the fewer, well-funded sites. Placeblogs in 2006 1 in 8 Americans were served by a local blog. Now 1 in 2. She knew they were increasing in number, she wanted to know if they were increasing and scope and ambition and the answer is yes. That is happening with advertising, engagement and then journalism. <br />
<br />
*Mark Katches, California Watch: “This is not going to happen overnight. It is really going to be a process. There are going to be some shooting stars among us, but most of them are going to be garage bands. … it is a process, it could be an accelerated process . . .. it starts around great content – credible, relevant content. <br />
<br />
*Darren Hillock, WestoftheI in Kenosha, Wis. “I feel like the thing that is really exciting me is the little story, the very very little story, which finds a home. When I was a print journalist I was always trying to find a way to lower the threshold to what was news. This medium provides the chance to tell those real little stories.” <br />
<br />
*Ann Galloway from Vt. Digger: “I’m not sure it is rocket science.” She would like a guide book for the next phase. A lot of the information is right here. “If you guys put together tip sheets or something more formalized it would be helpful.” <br />
<br />
*Rich Gordon: A class at the Medill School is trying to produce a guide like what he has described. He thinks it won’t be “best practices” per se. But they will look at the two big problems – the audience problem and the revenue problem. “Documenting what’s working and hopefully coming up with some new ideas as well.” <br />
<br />
*Dan O’Neill from EveryBlock, Chicago: He learned from Mike Orren that all the statistics don’t make the difference. “We’re finding that advertisers … one way of looking at it is they are not sophisticated enough.” That kind of targeting will be valuable in the future. Re data in neighborhood blogs: Everyblock has been good about collecting data but haven’t done a good job to ask bloggers to tell stories that are meaningful to human beings. <br />
<br />
*Roger Gafke: RJI – He learned “be transparent.” That liberates advertising and editorial strategies. <br />
<br />
*Stephen Franklin, Community Media Workshop – Organizations like these should partner with an NGO in your own community. <br />
Participant: “What I really enjoy is getting to understand something new and sharing it with readers. That’s a great thrill and I do it on a daily basis.” He suggests reframing comments to “ask a question about this story” rather than make a comment. <br />
<br />
*Tracy Record: Comments are content. <br />
<br />
*Dylan Smith, Tucson Sentinel – Ads are content also. “Don’t be afraid of advertising. Just go out and try to find good advertising that your readers are going to want to see.” Rebuild the advertising/news package. <br />
<br />
*Anthony Moor, Yahoo Inc. – Check out Journalists.org – next seminar is on hyperlocal news sites, what’s working and what isn’t. <br />
<br />
Participant: He does local online news community work because he wants to prove to other community members that they can do it too. <br />
<br />
Samantha Abernathy: Center Square Jouranlism – She was at a small town paper in a town of 2,000 people. “I never ran out of things to write about, in a town of 2,000 people with four reporters.” <br />
<br />
===Why the accelerated decline in press trust?===<br />
<br />
*Jay Rosen: In 1976, 47 percent of Americans told Gallup that they had a reasonable amount of confidence in the press. In 2006 that number was down to 14 percent. During that period, journalists become better educated, more elite, and more professional. So why did their trust ratings decline? <br />
<br />
When he posed it to his classes, they say trust in all institutions declined. He doesn’t know the answer to the “trust puzzler,” as he calls it. “The people in this room are making a start on that problem because they are going back to an original connection between journalism and community and saying that’s where it starts, to the places where people live and the people they live among.” <br />
<br />
“Somewhere between the professionalism of the press and the 2000’s, they lost the puck . . I don’t completely understand how it happened.” <br />
<br />
*Polly Kreisman, theloopny.com, Westchester County; It was when reporters became the story and the stars. “What we are trying to do now is making the people the story again.” <br />
<br />
*Denise Cheng at The Rapidian in Grand Rapids, Mich.: She wonders if it has to do with a failure of media literacy or a rise in skepticism and trust being more fragmented into smaller groups. <br />
<br />
*Peter Sklar, EdHat.com, Santa Barbara – He once created an online community for a software product. He tried to connect people with each other and with the physical community. What he was doing is now intersecting with all these journalists. “It’s just an accident that what I’m covering is called news.”</div>12.69.205.3http://www.newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-wrapup&diff=4213Chicago-block-wrapup2010-09-25T13:49:05Z<p>12.69.205.3: New page: erk<I>This wiki is running notes by [http://www.rjionline.org/fellows-program/densmore-b/index.php Bill Densmore] of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute on the proceedings of the e...</p>
<hr />
<div>erk<I>This wiki is running notes by [http://www.rjionline.org/fellows-program/densmore-b/index.php Bill Densmore] of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute on the proceedings of the event [http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php "Block by Block,"] bringing together some 70 local online news community (LONC) operators from around the U.S. and Canada. </I> <br />
<br />
QUICK LINKS: <br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Thursday's summit was [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cnm2010 #cnm2010]<br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Friday's gathering is [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23bxb2010 #bxb2010]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/registration/livefeed.php LIVE VIDEO STREAM]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php BLOCK BY BLOCK HOME PAGE (other links)]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-tagcloud LONC tag cloud -- the needs/issues]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-thursday Reporting on the Chicago news ecosystem]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-friday Friday morning: Building engagement]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-wrapup Friday wraup]<br />
<br />
==Ideas starting the wrapup session== <br />
Let them know you are a small business too . . . volunteers and contributors – How to attract volunteers and keep them engaged. Don’t let them fall off the face of the earth. . . . Link to your sources; be transparent about changes; truth squading in forums. <br />
<br />
==An interest group for local online news communities at ONA?== <br />
<br />
*Discussion in one break out about forming a interest group within the Online News Association to advance the work of Local Online News Communities (LONCs). The mission of the interest group, according to breakout co-moderator Bill Densmore, includes these words: Legitimize, Innovate, Represent, Train, Grow, Standards, Ethics, Communication, Collaboration, Network, Share ideas, Catalyze. Membership should be community based and indigenous, and be people not corporations. So an editor or reporter at Patch.com join, but AOL couldn’t. NEXT STEPS: A meetup around the ONA meeting in Washington, D.C.; establish a listserv. <br />
<br />
<br />
==What is something I’ve learned over the last day and a half?===<br />
<br />
David Boracks, North Carolina – The relationship with your advertisers can be part of your community engagement. “Putting you arm around them, not in an unseemly way from a journalistic standpoint, but as part of the community.”<br />
<br />
Anthony Moor, Yahoo – He learned what people in the room need. Analytics, knowing about your audience, networking, and networking to advertisers, informing policymakers, training. <br />
<br />
Speaker: “We need to help disrupt Chicago government a little bit -- a little pressure on City Hall to be more open.” <br />
<br />
Jason Primas, OpenMedia boston – Online news communities are definitely now a community of interest. “We are definitely definable.” <br />
<br />
Jay Rosen: “I call that entrepreneurial atomization overcome.” <br />
<br />
===Best practices I learned, assignments for someone else===<br />
<br />
*Susan Mernit: Hope springs eternal. “I’m impressed by the passion and hopefulness of everyone who came and how much we all want to make it work . . . we really, really need each other. We are trying to do something that is really hard and we don’t come from a revenue background.” Hopes to stay together for the next Block by Block. <br />
<br />
*Peter Stark (CHECK): All we’ve heard about is advertising for revenue. “There is another way to generate revenue.” Users should be paying for your content and we should be thinking outside the box. “Advertising is basically an evil thing. There is an opportunity now to not shake hands with the devil . . . I hope people come up with some new ideas to do it.” <br />
<br />
*Rosen: “I totally agree with that. We need to find other sources besides advertising . . . directly from subscribers is one. That’s the Consumer Reports model . . . they have a great deal of power and authority. We should be thinking of that as well.” <br />
<br />
*Chuck Welch, Lakeland Local, Fla. -- After listening to everything he things he wants to have sponsorships on his website, not just ads, or perhaps not even ads. “We haven’t talked a whole lot about what it is that we do – the journalism that we do and the potential conflicts that advertising sales create.” <br />
<br />
*Lia LaHood, SF Public Press – Learned how much diversity in practice there is within the local online news community. They are doing it without advertising. “We are a minority within a minority and I would like to know how you have been dealing with the challenges of staying ad free.” The same conflicts come with foundation money and there are challenges with mission creep by changing the shape of your business to confirm to funder’s interests. <br />
<br />
*Jay Rosen: “There is no innocent solution. Every solution compromises you in some way.” <br />
<br />
*Andrew Whitacre, MIT: A lot of people learn best when they asks questions of people who know nothing about what they do. Try talking to people in your community about how they have been successful. <br />
<br />
*Teresa Wippel, MyEdmondNews (Washington state): Based on the advice we got from Howard Owens – She has ideas for new targets for advertising. “I am going to tell her to start with those businesses who are absolutely the most respected in the community. That’s the best advice every that it makes total sense it is going to beget other advertisers.” <br />
<br />
*Jay Rosen: Of these groups: “Every single element of their success is dependent on the quality of their relationship with the community . . . which is very different from metropolitan journalism.” <br />
<br />
*Barbara Iverson, Chicago Talks at Columbia College: Has been using Kachingle. You can try it and use it on your site. “It is an interesting alternative. If enough people put Kachingle on their sites and enough people want to support good journalism it could be worth while.” <br />
<br />
*Howard Owens: There are a group of passionate people here about local. The people who are aren’t here at those who really believe in online news but don’t believe local matters. Why are you doing local? “To me the local community is the foundation of democracy and over the last 40 years our local community has become less and less engaged. I believe this is about bringing about that local democracy . . . communities with locally owned businesses have higher graduate rates, are healthier, don’t be skeptical about a key part of your local community, they are the most engaged, give the most donations, support the most charities.” <br />
<br />
*Ben Ilfeld, Sacramento Press: “I’m doing local because I like transformative stories. The ability to change something in my life.” Academia is doing a good job of getting the word out that people should be talking about local news. “I want people to study how effective are about what we do and find which things we can innovate on.” He would like deep research done on our effectiveness.<br />
<br />
*Joy Mayer RJI – She is defining engagement and can we tell whether it is effective or not. @MayerJoy <br />
<br />
*Participant: “I’m doing it because I used to work for a newspaper and the newspapers in my community aren’t doing the job anymore the way it needs to be done.” <br />
<br />
*Eric John Abrahamson, Black Hills Knowledge Network: On the local level it is hard to build a new business model. There is rising demand for quality information, but an unserved market. <br />
<br />
*Participant: An assignment for geeks: See a way for local bloggers and producers to such in structured, relevant data that would pair nicely with a blog post or some news item or piece of content they are able to create. <br />
<br />
*Susan Mernit: “I’m doing Oakland Local because I want to prove that media has become an effective forum of social change.” They organized Oakland Local around food, development, environment, identity, arts, education and justice. The site is a matrix that is about a place and three or four critical issues. <br />
<br />
*Lisa Williams: Don’t just pay attention to the fewer, well-funded sites. Placeblogs in 2006 1 in 8 Americans were served by a local blog. Now 1 in 2. She knew they were increasing in number, she wanted to know if they were increasing and scope and ambition and the answer is yes. That is happening with advertising, engagement and then journalism. <br />
<br />
*Mark Katches, California Watch: “This is not going to happen overnight. It is really going to be a process. There are going to be some shooting stars among us, but most of them are going to be garage bands. … it is a process, it could be an accelerated process . . .. it starts around great content – credible, relevant content. <br />
<br />
*Darren Hillock, WestoftheI in Kenosha, Wis. “I feel like the thing that is really exciting me is the little story, the very very little story, which finds a home. When I was a print journalist I was always trying to find a way to lower the threshold to what was news. This medium provides the chance to tell those real little stories.” <br />
<br />
*Ann Galloway from Vt. Digger: “I’m not sure it is rocket science.” She would like a guide book for the next phase. A lot of the information is right here. “If you guys put together tip sheets or something more formalized it would be helpful.” <br />
<br />
*Rich Gordon: A class at the Medill School is trying to produce a guide like what he has described. He thinks it won’t be “best practices” per se. But they will look at the two big problems – the audience problem and the revenue problem. “Documenting what’s working and hopefully coming up with some new ideas as well.” <br />
<br />
*Dan O’Neill from EveryBlock, Chicago: He learned from Mike Orren that all the statistics don’t make the difference. “We’re finding that advertisers … one way of looking at it is they are not sophisticated enough.” That kind of targeting will be valuable in the future. Re data in neighborhood blogs: Everyblock has been good about collecting data but haven’t done a good job to ask bloggers to tell stories that are meaningful to human beings. <br />
<br />
*Roger Gafke: RJI – He learned “be transparent.” That liberates advertising and editorial strategies. <br />
<br />
*Stephen Franklin, Community Media Workshop – Organizations like these should partner with an NGO in your own community. <br />
Participant: “What I really enjoy is getting to understand something new and sharing it with readers. That’s a great thrill and I do it on a daily basis.” He suggests reframing comments to “ask a question about this story” rather than make a comment. <br />
<br />
*Tracy Record: Comments are content. <br />
<br />
*Dylan Smith, Tucson Sentinel – Ads are content also. “Don’t be afraid of advertising. Just go out and try to find good advertising that your readers are going to want to see.” Rebuild the advertising/news package. <br />
<br />
*Anthony Moor, Yahoo Inc. – Check out Journalists.org – next seminar is on hyperlocal news sites, what’s working and what isn’t. <br />
<br />
Participant: He does local online news community work because he wants to prove to other community members that they can do it too. <br />
<br />
Samantha Abernathy: Center Square Jouranlism – She was at a small town paper in a town of 2,000 people. “I never ran out of things to write about, in a town of 2,000 people with four reporters.” <br />
<br />
===Why the accelerated decline in press trust?===<br />
<br />
*Jay Rosen: In 1976, 47 percent of Americans told Gallup that they had a reasonable amount of confidence in the press. In 2006 that number was down to 14 percent. During that period, journalists become better educated, more elite, and more professional. So why did their trust ratings decline? <br />
<br />
When he posed it to his classes, they say trust in all institutions declined. He doesn’t know the answer to the “trust puzzler,” as he calls it. “The people in this room are making a start on that problem because they are going back to an original connection between journalism and community and saying that’s where it starts, to the places where people live and the people they live among.” <br />
<br />
“Somewhere between the professionalism of the press and the 2000’s, they lost the puck . . I don’t completely understand how it happened.” <br />
<br />
*Polly Kreisman, theloopny.com, Westchester County; It was when reporters became the story and the stars. “What we are trying to do now is making the people the story again.” <br />
<br />
*Denise Cheng at The Rapidian in Grand Rapids, Mich.: She wonders if it has to do with a failure of media literacy or a rise in skepticism and trust being more fragmented into smaller groups. <br />
<br />
*Peter Sklar, EdHat.com, Santa Barbara – He once created an online community for a software product. He tried to connect people with each other and with the physical community. What he was doing is now intersecting with all these journalists. “It’s just an accident that what I’m covering is called news.”</div>12.69.205.3http://www.newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-advertising&diff=4212Chicago-block-advertising2010-09-25T02:14:05Z<p>12.69.205.3: </p>
<hr />
<div><I>This wiki is running notes by [http://www.rjionline.org/fellows-program/densmore-b/index.php Bill Densmore] of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute on the proceedings of the event [http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php "Block by Block,"] bringing together some 70 local online news community (LONC) operators from around the U.S. and Canada. </I> <br />
<br />
QUICK LINKS: <br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Thursday's summit was [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cnm2010 #cnm2010]<br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Friday's gathering is [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23bxb2010 #bxb2010]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/registration/livefeed.php LIVE VIDEO STREAM]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php BLOCK BY BLOCK HOME PAGE (other links)]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-tagcloud LONC tag cloud -- the needs/issues]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-thursday Reporting on the Chicago news ecosystem]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-friday Friday morning: Building engagement]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php/Chicago-block-advertising Selling advertising -- ins and outs]<br />
<br />
==Now we’re sitting in on the panel: “The ABCs of Local Advertising.”==<br />
<br />
<br />
“This is the golden age of journalism,” says session moderator Mark Potts of the consulting outfit GrowthSpur.com, which is building local-online advertising networks in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and other locations. Other panelists are Patricio Espinoza, Alamo City Times; Polly Kreisman, TheLoopNY.com; Mike Orren, Pegasus News and Liz George of Baristanet.com. <br />
<br />
<br />
Q: Mark Potts – Who are your customers? <br />
<br />
<br />
A: “People who pay us?” <br />
<br />
<br />
Potts: “Your customers are your advertisers. That’s a big leap for journalists to make. But that’s important because that is where the money is.” <br />
<br />
<br />
Potts recalls his effort, BackFence, to build a national network of LONC sites, “similar to what AOL is doing with Patch. We didn’t make it. Hint. Hint.” He calls the challenges of doing a LONC “mind expanding” because of so many skills you have to exercise. “Thinking I must be the only person having this trouble,” is wrong, says Potts. “No, actually there are thousands of us now.” <br />
<br />
<br />
The idea of the panel is to demystify the process of making number. “It’s about hard work,” he says.<br />
<br />
<br />
*Espinoza: The priority for him, in San Antonio, is not making money. But he realizes that every step he has taken to get the website launched, has included thinking about advertising and other revenue streams. He has created a plug-in for doing self-service ads. <br />
<br />
<br />
*Kreisman: “What I think we need to do is reframe our relationships with our advertisers,” she says. Become a collaborative partner, and when you do that, they are more willing to give you money because they realize you are trying to help them. Even in a non-profit situation, you still need backers, advertisers or not. <br />
<br />
<br />
*Potts: We keep coming back to advertising as the traditional way media has been funded; circulation has been a small part. Local advertising in the United States is a $100 billion business. “That’s what we’re going after, we want a piece of that.” An ad-backed site can make six figures. How is it done? What works with ad sales?<br />
<br />
<br />
*George: Your readers are probably the best salespeople. Because if they are not talking up your site, how are you going to make a sale to an advertiser. You are working with your readership and they are the great advocate for you out there. When they pitch to a business the fact they already know about Baristanet is a huge advantage. <br />
<br />
<br />
*Orren: At Pegasus News they built an incredibly detailed system for behavioral tracking. But what they found is “we were complicating ourselves out of sales.” People just wanted a run of site ad. “What you are good at is rallying people around a cause. Maybe the cause for today is rallying people to get to a wine shop.” The No. 1 fastest growing area of online advertising now is things that are not traditionally considered advertising. Things like the Groupon dealspace. It’s getting people to events. They learned early is that they are a lot more like radio than newspapers. Radio reps were the most successful as sales people. “What do my advertisers need and how can I rally that community I’ve got to go spend money in their stores.” <br />
<br />
<br />
*Potts: Groupon has been an unbelievable success. Groupon is proving that local advertising can be successful online. <br />
<br />
<br />
*Orren: Pegasus built their own Groupon knockoff called “Seize the deal.” They then integrated ongoing deals into their site so that contextually if you are reading a story about a new restaurant that is opening and we have restaurant deals, we’ll put those deals in front of you. We transact and give the merchant their cut. There are services that will let you whilelabel rather than building it yourself as they did. One is called closely.com (SCRIBE’S NOTE: Another is Faveroo from 614 Media in Columbus, Ohio). <br />
<br />
====IDEA: Give your advertisers an RSS twitter stream on your pages====<br />
<br />
*Kreisman: They bring people into the tend first with the traditional banner ad. “You sometimes have to educate them without letting them know they are being educated.” After that they offer a Loupon ad. “The first two Loupon ads we offered got zero response.” One was for a high-end candy store and the second a hardware store. But they had good success last week with a restaurant and a gym membership. “The businesses that already have the inventory are your targets,” she says. IDEA: Stream the tweets of your advertisers to your home page so that they can in effect publish their own text ad.<br />
<br />
<br />
*Potts: The daily marketing email is effective. <br />
<br />
<br />
*Jeremy Iggers: Daily Planet deals program – they tried it and made a little money but it consumed so much time and resources that it wasn’t worth it. They are now partnered with DealStores. Groupon has a 250,000-name list in the Twin Cities and they have only a few thousand. It doesn’t pay unless you are huge like Groupon. <br />
<br />
<br />
Orren: Football and basketball tickets sell like crazy. <br />
<br />
<br />
Potts: Groupon sold 3,400 subscriptions to the Washington Post. <br />
<br />
<br />
Howard Owens: What works in every market is food. Restaurants love trading advertising for gift certificates. “Be much more careful about any kind of retail, you’ve got to be very selective.” <br />
<br />
<br />
Potts: “The advantage you have over Groupon right now is localness . . . because you are local you are giving them deals that are close to them. You can beat them on relevance.” <br />
<br />
<br />
Iggers: Has anybody experimented with three-way barter. Taking goods and selling them in exchange for advertising. <br />
<br />
<br />
George: Bartering can work. IDEA: Give an ad to a retailer and ask for a reciprocal ad in their retail location. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kreisman: She does sponsor stories. “When someone advertises with us, I’ll do a feature story. …. That business is going to tweet and Facebook and photocopy and distribute that story everywhere and that will bring traffic back to you . . . . your advertiser is your partner, that’s the exact opposite of what we learned.” <br />
<br />
====Critical need: Make sure the advertisers know who you are====<br />
<br />
*Orren: Marketing to advertisers is critical and very difficult. Two years ago they had 250,000 unique visitors and couldn’t sell an ad. “The reason was that we couldn’t walk into a local business with any confidence that they had ever heard of us.” He jokes that at one point he No. 1 customer service complaint on their website was: “I did not get my Dallas News this morning.” The Dallas News is their competitor and their websites look totally different. He tells a second story about how he got a major auto dealership to test their results against print and they came out way on top. But when the deal was presented to the owner of the dealership, he’d never heard of PegasusNews so he killed the deal. “There is a lot to be done to make sure that the people who are going to be spending money with you know that you exist.” <br />
<br />
*Both Orren and Potts says a discussion about page views and hits does not sell ads. “What’s relevant to the advertiser is how many of my potential customers are going to be there the day I have to sell X,” says Orren. Just be able to demonstrate that people do come to the site – comment postings, registration for email newsletters – think about telling the story in terms of action. “The dry cleaner down the street doesn’t know if 25,000 unique visitors a month is good or bad, what matters is knowing how many of them are going to come into his store?” <br />
<br />
====Keep it simple: Ads for $100 a week====<br />
<br />
*Santa Barbara EdHat founder: He says they keep it simple. A banner ad is $100 a week. Period. They invoice and the advertisers pay. “I think a discussion has to be started about paying models that don’t involve advertising. The people who get value from our site are the people who are reading our site and we have to figure out how to have them pay for it.” <br />
<br />
<br />
*Potts: IDEA: Charge $1 for comments. It really cleans up the comments section. <br />
<br />
<br />
*EdHat: Paid subscribers get a blue comment bar and it is highlighted at the top. When trolls post too much, they turn them into an anonymous number and the go away. <br />
<br />
*Another idea from EdHat: Advertisers trade tickets to events for advertising. EdHat gives the tickets to their PAID subscribers; the paid subscribers go and write reviews of the events. <br />
<br />
*Potts: To your advertisers, you are the web expert. <br />
*Orren: Did how-to-market your business on the web. Advertisers do look to you as the expert. Things that seem simple and elementary to you are obscure to the business. Sometimes they will buy a campaign out of gratitude for the advice and help you’ve given them. <br />
<br />
*Potts: You don’t have to sell yourself. But find someone who will sell. You’ve got to have a rate card. “What formula do I have to use to figure out how to charge for my ads? Here is the formula: Pick a number and see if it works. If it doesn’t, pick another number.” <br />
<br />
*Orren: You will likely have to train a sales rep. And you may go through several iterations to get the right person. <br />
<br />
*Potts: “Advertising is sold and not bought at the local level.” Self-service advertising and just putting up an “advertise” banner doesn’t work either. “You’ve got to go out and work it, you can’t just sit and wait.” <br />
<br />
====Compensation sales models====<br />
<br />
*Orren: “There is no way you can pay somebody straight commission and that they can survive.” They do a combination of base plus commission plus bonuses. His best advice is: “Do not be stingy in compensating people who are going to bring in your revenue,” he says. “You may find the salesrep making more than you are for some time.” <br />
<br />
*Espinoza: What is the revenue per sales person? <br />
<br />
*Orren: More than $50,000 a month. <br />
<br />
*Sacramento Press: Some of their sales reps are pulling in $3K a month. Some of the senior people are making $25,000 a month for the organzation. “They are going to start out small and you are going to lose money on them.” Make sure they are selling things that last six months or more and do have to be continually resold. <br />
<br />
*George: Agrees sell campaigns. They give their rep a 20% commission. <br />
<br />
*Kreisman: The reality is most of us are one-man bands, posting all day, trying to sell, keeping up with technology and she has two small children. “I personally would rather chew a broken glass than sell an ad …. Sooner or later we are going to have to figure out what’s next . . . maybe we are going to have to collaborate. Maybe Patch will buy us, we can merge with the legacy media. But maybe there is something new.” <br />
<br />
*Small non-profit, two-person shop. They have had a public service model for five years with no advertising. Is he going to take this step into a dark arena he has no experience in. They have a Typepad blog that is very simple. They have two staff writing and covering local government. He has to think about how to deal with advertising technically. (Potts says it is one line of code in a blog). <br />
<br />
*Orren: The one line of code is easy, but it is just as easy to do a post. <br />
<br />
*Espinoza: TypePad has a program like Google Ads. If you are a non profit, go visit the TexasTribune.org – they have a PBS-type business plan. They have a plan for subscriptions going form $25 a month to $2,500 a month. <br />
<br />
*Potts: Those sponsorships look a lot like ads. <br />
<br />
====IDEA: Use AdSense for prospecting====<br />
<br />
*Orren: Take down the national remnant ads. Because the local advertisers appreciate it. He says AdWords is very little revenue. “I would bury it somewhere way, way down on the page.” It is good for prospecting – because whoever’s local contextual ads are showing up on your site are excellent prospects for direct sales. “Our reps would see their ads, ban them from our AdSense account and then call and prospect them.” <br />
<br />
*Teresa Wippel of MyEdmondsNews.com (north of Seattle): Likes to get into community and do Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club. People see that she is sincere and committed. “And I’ve had people buy ads because they want to support me.” <br />
<br />
*Potts: “There is no free lunch on this. It doesn’t work that way. You are going to have to participate and do things.” <br />
<br />
*Kreisman: “I think in theory creating ecosystems is a very important thought process, even if it just the 14 blogs in your area or figuring out how to sell a national brand . … if you look at how newspapers evolved they would create networks and they would sell in networks.” <br />
<br />
*Potts: He suggests partnering with traditional media. <br />
<br />
*George: They had a relationship with The New York Times where The Times ran for 18 months and involved a traffic exchange, not a partnership. You have to define partnership for yourself. Sometimes there are mutual benefits, sometimes a rev-share, co-launching special sections with a print-online sale. All of this deals raise your profile and expose you to more readers and advertisers. “Every time this happens an advertiser knows you in a different way.” <br />
<br />
*Potts: He is working with TBD.com in Washington, D.C. Everybody is partnering there – but not with the Washington Post, which, according to Potts, went to blogs and said, “We’ll put your content on our site, we won’t link back to you and we won’t pay for for it, but you get to be in the Washington Post.” <br />
<br />
See: http://www.tbd.com <br />
<br />
====What about Patch.com and MainStreetConnect?====<br />
<br />
*Potts: Patch.com is coming in. It is starting to be crowded. It’s a $100B pot of gold and the traditional obtainers of that – YellowPages and TVs and newspapers – are falling apart. Potts notes what is going on in Westchester. What’s the competition like? <br />
<br />
*Kreisman: She was a TV investigative reporter. The tenaciousness and competitiveness never ends. The first instinct is to fight. “But I think there is room for everybody and I just want to make us different . . . I think of Patch as a MacDonalds and we’re a diner . . . make yourself different, as good as you can, tell your advertisers what eyeballs you’re going to bring to them and if you’re good people are going to come. Patch looks the same in every market. They can’t sort of push the envelope the way we try to do . . . the other company, MainStreetConnect … .he called me into a meeting and said look we are going to put you out of business anyway, why don’t you come and be our Westchester editor . . . and I said no thanks. Let’s see what they do.” <br />
<br />
===Other views: Advertising or sponsorship?===<br />
<br />
*Marjorie Frievogel of St. Louis Beacon: ”We find it much more effective to go out and get direct support from people at this point,” she says. “I think there is an important difference between the concept of advertising and sponsorship.” She adds: Most advertisers are about engaging eyeballs. A sponsor you can talk about the quality of engagement in ways other than numbers and the importance of journalism to community. <br />
<br />
*Orren: “Why can’t you have that kind of discussion with your advertisers? The conversation you described is an excellent one and the right one. It’s not eyeballs, they want customers. I would stay off the eyeballs.” <br />
<br />
**Michael Stoll: San Francisco Press. Does not take advertising. He thinks there has to be a diversity of revenue models. They have six, including selling a print newspaper periodically for $2 an issue. Let’s talk more about that line between sponsorship and advertising. What is the value to the news product and to the community? What is the marketing value of saying you are non-commercial and independent. <br />
<br />
*Potts: “There is a lot of misleading going on among public broadcasting. NPR says we are member supported.” But they got a lot of money from the McDonald’s heir, Joan Kroc. NPR actually exists on multiple models. “It’s all hard. Pursue everything. There is no magic bullet here.” <br />
<br />
===Selling introductions: Knight backing [http://www.nowspots.com NowSpots.com] from WindyCitizen.com===<br />
<br />
*Brad Flora of WindyCitizen.com: Knight News Challenge gave them $250,000 to start NowSpots.com – a new kind of ad program. They were not selling eyeballs but introductions. Go to http://www.windycitizen.com --- the are going to form a new company that will make it real easy to sell those kinds of ads. “It is going to be open source. We are going to need a lot of feedback from you folks.” <br />
<br />
==Q-and-A: Pushback on editorial/advertising line?===<br />
<br />
George: “That’s a recurring dance that you do. Basically we could write about someone because we wrote about them, there’s always a question that we are writing about them because they are our advertiser . . . our readers are keeping track . . . when we really did want to give the advertising we did something called ‘A Word from our Sponsors.’ And it was clearly delineated. People really appreciated it, the readers appreciated it. That it was transparent and it was set up that way.” <br />
<br />
*Orren: There is a church and state separation at PegasusNews and Mike Orren is the only one that deals with both. <br />
<br />
*Potts: What about foundation money influencing coverage? Independence is not clear there. It is something you always deal with. <br />
<br />
-- END OF SESSION --</div>12.69.205.3http://www.newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-friday&diff=4211Chicago-block-friday2010-09-25T02:13:25Z<p>12.69.205.3: /* Morning session: Making community engagement work= */</p>
<hr />
<div><I>This wiki is running notes by [http://www.rjionline.org/fellows-program/densmore-b/index.php Bill Densmore] of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute on the proceedings of the event [http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php "Block by Block,"] bringing together some 70 local online news community (LONC) operators from around the U.S. and Canada. </I> <br />
<br />
QUICK LINKS: <br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Thursday's summit was [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cnm2010 #cnm2010]<br />
*The Twitter hashtag for Friday's gathering is [http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23bxb2010 #bxb2010]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/registration/livefeed.php LIVE VIDEO STREAM]<br />
*[http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/mclellan-sept-event/index.php BLOCK BY BLOCK HOME PAGE (other links)]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-tagcloud LONC tag cloud -- the needs/issues]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chicago-block-thursday Reporting on the Chicago news ecosystem]<br />
*[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php/Chicago-block-advertising Selling advertising -- ins and outs]<br />
<br />
<big>A large chunk of Friday is devoted to breakouts with circle-round discussion among LONC practitioners. But setting the themes for the day are two panels, “Making Community Engagement Work” and “The ABC’s of Local Advertising.” </big><br />
<br />
==Morning session: Making community engagement work==<br />
<br />
<big>Panelists: David Cohn of Spot.us (and a 2010-2011 Donald W. Reynolds fellow), Tracy Record, co-owner of West Seattle Blog, Andrea Neatta of The Terminal (Birmingham, Ala.) and moderated by Susan Mernit, founder/editor of Oakland Local.</big> <br />
<br />
‘’(We’ll add some running commentary of the first 45 minutes of this session later. Picking up midstream here. )’’<br />
<hr><br />
====Thinking about training and tools==== <br />
<br />
*“In terms of training, sitting in a circle is immensely better than an hour an a half of panels,” says Cohn. He lauds barcamps, where the agenda is set up by the people who show up. “You tap the resources and knowledge of the people who are there – cross pollenation.” <br />
<br />
*Record: “In terms of tools, we use all of them,” she says. “Do not ignore the good old fashioned telephone.” <br />
<br />
====Journalistic integrity and engagement====<br />
<br />
*Mernit gives the example of how do you lead the community on a serious issue (the impending sentencing in a celebrated criminal trial in Oakland) without abandoning your standards of objectivity. Do people in the audience have stories to share about that? Where do you draw the line? <br />
<br />
*Natta: “I come at it from a very weird perspective,” he says, because he was formerly a city official before starting his LONC. Now running the LONC, he says: “To do that effectively you sometime have to (respectfully) disagree with the establishment.” But you can be a watchdog and still have a positive attitude.<br />
<br />
*Cohn: Says where you draw the line isn’t as important as what follows. ” Pick a line and stick to it. . . . Whereever you do decided to draw it, make it transparent. Be open to that and be willing to hear people out on that. Make sure there is a place on your site where you are able to articulate that . . . be public about it and be willing to be engaged about it.” <br />
<br />
*Record: “You do need to draw a line if you want to be taken seriously. You need to reiterate it over and over.” She makes it very clear they can’t take freebies – even meals. “It is up to us to find a tactful way to explain that and not offend people.” Anytime they mention a sponsor on West Seattle Blog, in any context, the always mention they are a sponsor. <br />
<br />
===Q-and-A===<br />
<br />
Jan Schaffer: Where do you draw the line between privacy and transparency? <br />
<br />
*Tracy Record: She says they will typically withhold the names of people arrested – even though they are made public by police -- until they have been formally charged by the court – typically in West Seattle that’s a couple of days. <br />
<br />
*Howard Owens: They have a policy that when the police put out an arrest report, they publish it. “There’s a commercial aspect – people just love reading that stuff . . . publishing everything you can about the police is a matter of transparency. The public plays a lot for that service.” <br />
<br />
*Polly Kreisman: “The police blotter is our most heavily visited section.” She says the police blotter in Scarsdale, N.Y., is “hysterical.” They have begun a semi-humorous “crime of the week.” A crime involving business leaders in their community – she has chosen not to run their arrest mug shot – but they do put it in the police blotter. With mug shots “the damage can be great.” <br />
<br />
*Q: A young man returning from Afghanistan who was flamed on his Facebook page. Is that a public situation that should be written about? Is Facebook public? <br />
<br />
====Is Facebook public?====<br />
*Show of hands: A strong majority in the room agrees with the statement: “Facebook is public.” However, David Cohn cautions that some folks who use Facebook may not understand it is public; some sensitivity might be exercised as to their intentions. <br />
*Lisa Williams: Pretty soon their might be anyone left to hire or date because of Facebook.<br />
<br />
*Test articulated by one speaker: If the matter on Facebook is on a site with just a few users, that might not be perceived as public by the Facebook owner. But if the Facebook user has posted something that has gone to hundreds of friends – that ways in favor of it being public. <br />
<br />
*”You can really make a serious mistake if you pull something off Facebook and use it.” Follow Journalism 101: Check it out. <br />
<br />
*Mernit: “While I don’t consider Facebook to be private, it’s not public either, it’s in that gray space.” She says she would be furious if someone took something off her Facebook page and published it without checking with her. “I don’t see Facebook as being a public library.” <br />
<br />
====Small operations: Time management ====<br />
*Anne Galloway: (moving off the Facebook topic) – If you are a tiny operation and don’t have a lot of time, how do you manage social media time? <br />
<br />
*Record: It has to be something that you can do simultaneously. The LONC operator “is swimming in multiple streams at once.” Her husband has nine separate windows open on their office computer, monitoring police scanner, Facebook and Twitter feeds and multiple other sources. <br />
<br />
*Natta: You need to recharge and unplug at times. If it adds value, you have to try ot do it. <br />
<br />
*Cohn: “I used to say the Internet doesn’t sleep so I can’t either.” But he says it is important to try different methods that allow you to break away. Example: Only answer emails in the morning and at night and during the day, turn it off. “Try to find a way to use these things as tools rather than chores – a lot of it is a mental switch.” <br />
<br />
*Mernit: She is a fan of what she calls “bursty work.” She says don’t do everything at the same quantity or pace all the time. First thing when she gets up every morning is updating Oakland Local. <br />
<br />
====Splitting time among web, social media and public engagement====<br />
<br />
*Tony Moore, Yahoo: Percentage of time spent on each thing. Balance community engagement, a quality site and social media (three items) <br />
<br />
*Natte: Spends more time on the Twitter and website, but he wants to focus more on off line. <br />
<br />
*Cohn: Not a zero sum game. He doesn’t compartmentalize mentally. <br />
<br />
*Record: They cover every community council in West Seattle – there are 13 or 14 of them. <br />
<br />
*Mernit: Divide the labor. <br />
<br />
====What happens when Facebook shuts you down====<br />
<br />
*Facebook shut down his account and he had 2,000 followers. They never told him why. He lost hundreds of photos, thousans of fans. “What’s your backup?” <br />
<br />
*Answer from audience: Make Facebook your backup. Keep your jewels on your own servers and services. <br />
<br />
====How does coopetition work with the Seattle Times====<br />
<br />
*Rusty Coats: Asks Tracy Record to talk about the networked journalism initiative in Seattle in which the Seattle Times legacy daily has partnered closely with a network of a dozen or more blogs and LONCs. <br />
<br />
*Record: The collaboration is voluntary, non-contractual and the Seattle Times never publishes anything from the LONCs – they just link out to the news blogs.<br />
<br />
==[http://newshare.com/wiki/index.php/Chicago-block-advertising GO TO: Session Two: The ABC's of local advertising]==</div>12.69.205.3