James Breiner: Entrepreneurial Journalism

The stories of innovative digital news media are one of my favorite parts of ISOJ, the International Symposium on Online Journalism now under way at the University of Texas, Austin.

This year was no exception, and in just one hour, an all-star panel managed to leave us with many ideas and even wanting more. The panel:

• Chair: Jennifer Preston, vice president, journalism, Knight Foundation
• Sara Lomax-Reese, CEO, WURD Radio
• Alison Go, chief strategy officer, Chalkbeat 
• Mandy Jenkins, general manager, The Compass Experiment (partnership Google-McClatchy)
• Fraser Nelson, vice president of business innovation, Salt Lake Tribune 
• Chris Sopher, co-founder and CEO, WhereBy.us

A key element of each publication’s business model was who the owners were, and how the ownership was structured.

Black-owned radio, WURD

Sara Lomax-Reese said that it was important to the Black community in Philadelphia that WURD Radio was family owned, founded by her father, and that it was part of the Black community. It is a for-profit outlet, and its revenue sources are 10% membership, 25% grants, and the majority from advertising and sponsorships. It wants to convert to 30% membership, 25% grants, 40% ads, and 5% other. 

Black ownership of media is a key element in gaining trust of the audience about what is happening on the ground in the neighborhoods, said Lomax-Reese. WURD is the largest Black-owned talk radio station in Pennsylvania, broadcasting 6 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday. The station lets people tell their own stories in their own voices. Otherwise they might not be heard about issues relevant in the community.

And in the time of a health crisis like covid-19, WURD has been a lifeline of information especially relevant to the Black community, such as which hospitals were taking covid patients in their neighborhoods, where to get help if you have lost health insurance, and so on.

She would like to spawn more Black-owned media and more original reporting. At the moment, they publish investigative stories by media partners, but she would like to expand the staff to do original reporting.

The Compass Experiment: local means trusted

Mandy Jenkins of The Compass Experiment, owned and operated by the McClatchy group and funded by the Google News Initiative, said that hiring local people gave important credibility to its startup in Youngstown, Ohio.

Mahoning Matters launched last year just as the Youngstown Vindicator, which covered the Mahoning Valley in Ohio, came under new ownership. Many of the newspaper’s staff were looking for a new home and found one at the startup. It is the first of three digital-only community media launched by The Compass Experiment.

” ‘We are a local business’ was our message,” Jenkins said, who is an Ohio native and studied journalism at nearby Kent State University.

Having local people on staff has been key in developing relationships with local advertisers. They are selling direct rather than relying on advertising networks. They are also generating revenue from user contributions and some grants.

Jenkins said she has borrowed some revenue and operations ideas from the Village Media publishing group, which owns and operates 16 local publications in Canada and has digital partnerships with six other media groups.

The next startup in the group is the Longmont Leader near Denver. They acquired all the assets of a local nonprofit news site and are in the process of hiring. Since the area is 30% Hispanic, they plan to hire at least one Spanish speaking journalist and provide some content in Spanish. They are talking to local foundations and looking to add some sponsors.

Going deep on one topic: education

Alison Go of Chalkbeat talked about the ambitious expansion plans for this nonprofit, which covers education from the point of view of the teachers, parents, and students. It already has two to five reporters in eight regions and plans to add 10 more bureause by 2023.

“We have 60 cities on our waiting list,” Go said. Having a single-subject focus “is good for the bottom line,” she said. The publications can attract sponsors and advertisers that want to reach only teachers and administrators, for example, or organizations focused on quality education.

Go sees potential for other single-subject media, as in the chart she presented below. Other potential topics: public health, public welfare, criminal justice, infrastructure/climate change

Community ownership: Salt Lake City

Fraser Nelson, vice president of business innovation at the Salt Lake Tribune, described how the newspaper recently won approval from tax authorities to convert to nonprofit status.

The publication, which continues to publish in print as well as digital, is now owned, operated, and funded by the community, Nelson said. The final transition took place on April 1. That took from November to April 1. This structure will allow more foundations to fund them.

They have established a foundation as well with the goal of reaching $20 million in assets. They will then make grants to “emerging voices” in Utah, such as media in Spanish and serving Native American media.

The Tribune has 68 employees, has print subscribers, and has kept its paywall, although it has made the publication free to some users.

They have also asked subscribers, who are paying $75 a year, to double their payment as a contribution. “Over 50% of new subscribers are paying the $150, twice as much as the regular subscription”.

One key issue that kept coming up The good news and the bad news is that there is no silver bullet solution to the quest for sustainability of high-quality journalism.

Let 5,000 media outlets bloom

Chris Sopher is founder of WhereBy.us, a technology platform that helps media creators build new media. His organization’s five outlets are all profitable and are generating a total of $1.5 million a year, with revenue generated mainly by email newsletters. The startup is funded by investors.

However, Sopher said that he has changed his mind radically about the best future path for independent media. For many years, the idea was for a digital startup to try to own a geographic market and build for scale, in much the same way that a newspaper did.

Now he is thinking that each of those media markets should have hundreds or thousands of specialized niche media. “The people who are doing the journalism are more important than the brand. The value of a central newspaper brand is much less.”

More media means more owners

“There’s little benefit to massive scale in the current moment. Focus and loyalty and niche are the most important factors now. So there should be lots of niche topics. The world is a lot more fragmented. We should have multiple brands rather than one brand that’s central, like the old model.”

“We have to fund more disruptive innovation rather than just preserving what we have. This ecosystem can be much more vibrant, costs to entry should be much lower. Barriers are too high. We need many more media makers, more innovative creators.”

WhereBy.us is getting ready to launch software tools to allow others to create there own media organizations own their own media.

Like several of the other panelists, Sopher is betting on a future with more media owners. This model will bring in people disconnected from existing media, unserved by current media, including many ethnic and racial minorities as well as other underrepresented groups.

You can watch the video of the entire session on the link below.