Who is going to pay us?
NOTES FROM BILL DENSMORE:
Richard Anderson talks about his experience starting VillageSoup.com in Camden/Rockland, Maine. He says the local newspaper isn’t doing a good job any longer of serving markets in the 40,000-50,000 population range with just print. They have priced little merchants out of the advertising market. The merchants just care about getting “feet over the transom.” Web advertising can do this for them in the VS “learn, share, shop” system where the merchants are given a web platform they can edit themselves for $19.95 a week.
He has spent “north of $5 million” building VS. Has now roughly 20% revenues from online; 80% revenues from two weekly papers started later. Their revenue comes 90% from business and 10% from individuals. “Banners and buttons are not sufficient.”
One participant asks about the idea of using volunteers to report the news and having advertisers “sponsor” that effort.
Barry Parr of Coastsider.com talks about it being very difficult, after four years, to maintain volunteer efforts.
Lauren Rich Fine talks about the Lakewood [Ohio] Observer website. http://www.lakewoodobserver.com — she’s an investor in a software company, AGS.Software which is seeking to market the software which drives the Observer’s website. Besides the website, the group puts out a twice-a-month weekly newspaper for the close-in-west-of-Cleveland suburb.
David Cohn talked about his http://www.copycamp.us initiative.
CopyCamp is a go for June 28, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Merc.
Cohn of San Francisco has started the idea of “CopyCamp” — unconferences on how to do journalism for amateurs. david.newassignment@gmail.com
http://www.copycamp.pbwiki.com/
CopyCamp is an open space gathering born from the desire for people to share, learn and further journalism in a positive environment. It is an intense event with discussions, workshops, demonstrations built on the interactions from participants. The name CopyCamp was inspired as a complement to *Camp and the Unconference Meme.
John Boyer talked about getting young students involved in global affairs, citing the work of Benjamin Barber and Robert Kubie (sp?) at Rutgers.
Beth Lawton of the Newspaper Association of America mentioned the reluctance of mainstream media to partner with independents.
Persephone Miel of the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School talked about an idea to use software under development by Michael Melillo of SocialChord LLC (732-317-4445 / http://www.malkutha.com / melillo@malkutha.com) to power a neighborhood site serving the South End neighborhood of Boston.
Stephanie Savell, of the Ashoka Foundation in Washington, D.C., expressed what she saw as a key challenge: “How do we make independent journalists financially viable?” Ashoka is looking for people who are the launch stage of new projects — to help them.