Grassroots Journalism - Who We Are

This is a page for everyone to introduce themselves, and leave a link or two to their own grassroots journalism website. If you've been committing acts of journalism and fostering online community in your area, share with us.

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Who we are

Submitted by Dave Bullard on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 20:29.

I'm one of the owners of Fulton Daily News.com and Oswego Daily News.com. We're independent web publishers in Upstate New York, and, at nine years old, one of the nation's oldest community journalism websites. (Steve Outing wrote about us in a piece for E&P way back in the day -- it's not online anymore -- in a column that also profiled Backfence and Benicia News. One is gone and the other is still with us.) Fulton is a city of 11,000; Oswego is its conjoined twin at about 25,000 population.
We're a hybrid -- we have two real journalists and a third sports journalist -- and take the community's content contributions. The daily output is a pretty rich pile of stuff -- 3 to 5 freshly written news pieces plus 10 to 20 community pieces a day, plus sports. There are three owners, though one is retired. The second works on our behalf with a partner company. I'm the guy in the office, doing QuickBooks and working on content and managing projects.
We're supported three ways:

Advertising on the site -- this is by far where most of our income comes from;
Website design and development -- local advertisers need their ad "click" to go someplace, so we build, host and maintain sites for them;
Public events, like a Home Show or Holiday Expo and other non-traditional sources of revenue like sponsored concerts.

We have one sales person (we normally have two, but we've been several months trying to find someone qualified to sell new media in a small town) and a full-time webmaster/graphic designer.
Our current (dog-butt ugly) site is built in ezPublish, a nice piece of open source software with some significant problems handling very large databases. In a week or so, we'll be rolling out a really nifty-looking site built in WordPress, which we selected after looking at all kinds of open source alternatives. (I won't post a link here, but if anyone's interested in seeing what we'll look like in WordPress, drop me an e-mail.) Expression Engine was our second-favorite, if anyone's interested.
After all these years, we are break-even or a little above. It's hard work but we're on the verge of some really strong growth.
I'll be glad to share what I know, and, more importantly, what I don't know. I'm hoping to learn a lot here.

Welcome, Dave. Please send site.

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 21:00.

Yeah, please send me a link to your beta wordpress site and I'll give it a spin.
Welcome. I'm hoping we can all share a lot of ideas here. I want to try to post at least one or two things I've learned so far each week.
Also, since you're one of the first members, your opinion on what the site should be and how it should be operate weighs a lot!
-kpaul

Check your gmail

Submitted by Dave Bullard on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 22:21.

Link is on its way.
I have no idea what the site should do. I just know that I need to know more, fast, about everything -- content, CMS, business, advertising, product development. I've learned a lot in 9 years -- mostly "what not to do" -- and figure that the crowd knows more than I do. If a crowd gathers and shares and argues a little with me, then I'll be in exactly the right place.
I'm gonna dig into the forums and see if we can get a conversation going on some issues. I'll post what I know and see if it's an anomaly or something everyone can use.
Be well, and good luck,
Dave

Asking Questions

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Thu, 09/20/2007 - 00:37.

I've been thinking about the best way for us to share our experiences so far.
Perhaps someone (or a group) can post questions, and the rest of us answer on topic about that particular question.
Thoughts?
-kpaul

Fulton Daily News

Submitted by Bruce on Tue, 09/18/2007 - 03:51.

Greetings from Southwest Michigan!
I'm very new to Local Journalism and very much in the fledgling stage of work to transform my vision for a local, online journalism venture that's been taking shape over the last couple of years into reality. I'm pleased this website is available as an avenue for sharing and learning. And I'm very happy to find your comments, in particular, since I've been admiring Fulton Daily News.com over the last several months. I'm greatly impressed with your approach and the appearance of your site. Thanks for sharing information about Fulton Daily News.com and the efforts behind it. I look forward to learning more and, hopefully, sharing some things of value as I move forward with my project. Keep up the good work!

Hellooooo, Michigan!

Submitted by Dave Bullard on Wed, 09/26/2007 - 20:32.

Bruce:
Thanks for the kind comment!
We're literally one or two days away from launching a new look and feel for our sites, built in WordPress (big, big ups for WordPress and its community of developers).
I'd be glad to talk to you either here on the site or on the phone (315-593-2510) if I can help at all.
I can only offer a few words of general advice if you're just starting out:
1. Don't sell the site yourself. Or don't do the content yourself. Pick one. If you're a content guy (and that's how most of us got here), find a part-time sales person to sell the thing locally. And if you're a sales and marketing guy, get content help. You gotta make money, plain as that. We've been break-even for about four years now, and I gotta say, it stinks ;) But we're about to roll out a couple of initiatives that should significantly boost our income.
2. Go where the local paper ain't. We started by covering local government in depth. We had been told over and over again that nobody wants to read that stuff. They were wrong. But we had to dig in and look for stories at those meetings that were, in some way, compelling. And guess what? There's plenty of it. Forget everything any newspaper or broadcast consultant or manager ever told you.
3. The smallest unit of content is the best. A report from a local club or a parent's proud note about Billy's sports/school achievement is great stuff, though we've been trained to think otherwise. I tell people all the time that it's not our "paper". It's theirs. That "community" feel is one thing they want to recapture.
4. There's content everywhere. Get it. One of our more popular sections is RaiderNet Daily, which consists of articles written by high school students for their school newspaper. It's highly original stuff and often presents perspectives on hot local stories that adults just can't pull out of teens. Cost: zero. Value: immense.
5. Think, and emulate, local radio. We're starting live play by play high school sports next week, using free streaming from Ustream.tv and college broadcasters. Sponsors are lining up, including some who have never spent a dime with us in 10 years.
6. All of this is hard as hell, and will take you much longer than you expect to make a profit. Settle in for a long wait, but it's worth it. Nothing in my life has been as rewarding as this.
I haven't spent as much time on this site (or any, for that matter) as I would like because of the work involved in our redesign. But I'm looking forward to spending a lot more time here soon, and hoping to learn a lot from y'all. I'm open to any topic that anyone wants to talk about
Be well, and thanks again,
Dave

More from Michigan

Submitted by Bruce on Sun, 10/07/2007 - 22:07.

Dave,
Thanks so much for your "general advice" and willingness to assist as I work toward launching River Country Journal here in Southwest Michigan. Your comments are much appreciated. I'm encouraged to know that the advice you offered on the basis of your years of experience in the business is very much in sync with my thinking about the venture I'm formulating. I was struck, in particular, by your comments about selling the site OR doing the content, not doing both, and your suggestion to "think, and emulate, local radio."
To use your terminology, I'm definitely a "content guy" with experience in both radio and print journalism. For the last 15 years, I've headed up our local chamber of commerce, a position I'll be retiring from at the end of the year to clear the way to give full attention to making the River Country Journal come alive. I've done a good deal of writing during my chamber tenure including a monthly newsletter, news releases, annual reports and more than 300 weekly newspaper columns. Prior to the chamber job, I worked in commercial radio broadcasting for 25 years, the last 15 years of that career as news director of our local radio station and host of a daily, half-hour talk show. The position entailed lots of reporting, writing, interviewing, production, plus marketing and public relations work. My goal is to combine the skills, experience, knowledge and relationships gained through the radio and chamber work with the technology of the Internet to create a unique new product/service that will be of value to the area in which I live and be financially viable as well. I suspect I'll find that you're very much on the mark in saying that "all of this is hard as hell," but agree that "it's worth it" and can be very satisfying.
I've explored the new Fulton Daily News website and appreciate your "Welcome to the new Daily News" piece and the comments you've had in response to it. I can see that the changes you've made have greatly expanded your capabilities, although, as indicated earlier, I liked the look of your site before the change. I will look forward to continuing my regular visits to see the new elements unfold. I'm especially curious about the audio you intend to add to the site since --harkening back to my radio days -- I want to make audio an important facet of the River Country Journal.
Good luck to both of us -- and others who share our interest in local online journalism!
Best wishes!
Bruce

add a techie to the list, Bruce

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 06:37.

Or at least someone who knows what to look for ... Sounds like Barry Parr outsourced it and is happy with that. That's another option.
My strength (and weakness), I think, is that I have a little knowledge in a lot of different areas.
I have started working with a local person to sell ads. We've sold a few so far. I like having it separated... outsourcing the sales almost ...
Anyway, just some random thoughts to throw in the mix.
Definitely keep us in the loop of how you're moving forward, etc. And thanks for sharing.
Thanks,
kpaul

Bruce: Thanks for the kind

Submitted by Dave Bullard on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 15:51.

Bruce:
Thanks for the kind words! Can't wait to see what you come up with in Michigan!
The audio thing is pretty easy, actually. (I'm an old radio guy, just like you, so it's easier for us, but it's pretty simple stuff nonetheless.)
Get a simple audio recorder. Olympus's WS-210 has a good frequency response and is about $100 bucks at full retail. (The older D-2 is also very good, has a slightly better frequency response.) A good mic, like the Sennheiser e825s is 2 for $50. I like its warm sound. The rest is free: Audacity or one of several other freeware audio recording and editing software packages; Switch from NCH Software to translate the proprietary file format of the Olympus to mp3 or wav; any free audio hosting service to host the audio and give you codes to embed them into the page.
Alternately, you could get a Sony mini-disc recorder like the MZ-N10 or its more expensive big brother, to record the audio -- but you'll have to deal with disc media and the imminent death of the mini-disc format.
Bottom line: $150 bucks puts you into local radio.
We've put a little audio up over the weekend -- supplemental to our coverage of a football game. Interviews with boath coaches. Later this week, we'll have audio clips from players and the coach at our local college, as their Division III hockey team plays for the first time since winning a national championship. It's part of a seven-part runup to the season opener Friday. (Which we hope to broadcast live.)
Give me a call if you ever wanna talk, or drop me a private note. Good luck!
-Dave

great questions...

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Tue, 10/30/2007 - 03:31.

I'm going to move them to the forums for people to answer so they don't get lost here... will try to answer as soon as i get some time. (which is something funny about this site - all the grassroots journalists i know are usually too busy to share via an online community. heh.)

Anyway, welcome to the site and look for these questions in the forums...

-kpaul

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