How to create a new local news outlet in your city for under $500k
In an earlier post, Spirited Media CEO Jim Brady mentioned an idea we’re pursuing to launch Spirited Media sites in new cities. The plan — called “Launchpad” — is laid out in greater detail below, but if, after reading, you’re interested in discussing this with us, drop me a line; I’m chris(at)spiritedmedia(dot)com. — Chris Krewson, Vice President of Strategy, Spirited Media.
In its four-plus years of life, Spirited Media has learned a lot about what it takes to launch and operate local news sites in a major cities. The launch challenges are numerous — the cost, the significant time commitment, the technology, the hiring — and the risk huge. But, as we’ve launched and learned, we’ve gotten much more efficient. In fact, we’ve cut our own burn rate more than 70 percent in the past 10 months by launching a membership program in all three of our cities, renewing our emphasis on events and taking what we’ve learned and turning it into consulting revenue. These efforts clearly aligned our our editorial and business missions around continuing to build a relationship with our readers.
So we know how to launch and grow new local news brands. Now, we’ve developed a plan that would, with the help of one year of funding and a partnership with local journalism school, allow us to launch in your city. Here’s a little more background on who we are, what we’re looking for, and how we might explore working together.
Who we are
We’re Spirited Media, a fast-growing media company designed to make local news engaging and accessible for a younger audience. We leverage the Internet and social media to report the news in our cities and engage young audiences in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Denver in new, powerful ways.
We turn mayoral candidates into emoji. We sleep overnight in vacant lots to write about what it’s like for people experiencing homelessness. We ride bikes strapped down with pool noodles to test whether drivers are obeying cycling laws (spoiler alert: they’re not!). And we spotlight the great work done by up-and-coming city residents in a variety of fields, from politics to art to the law, celebrating their achievements at incredibly popular monthly events. We do all that while still covering politics, transportation, gentrification and much more.
So why do we want to talk to you?
What We’re Looking For
We are looking to expand our successful model into more cities, and we’re convinced partnering with a university and a funder is the best way to do it. So we’re seeking:
- A university partner, which would provide physical space for our fledgling news operation for 18 months, as well as at least one intern per semester for at least two years.
- A foundation partner, with funding to cover the first 12 months of the site’s existence, though we’re also open to partnering with existing news organizations to create something new.
- A city or region that can support our type of local site, one supported largely by membership and sponsorable events and aimed at reaching that crucial younger demographic, one that will play a key role in determining the future viability of robust and impactful local journalism. So, basically, any city.
Where we’re going
Why: We want to train the next generation of reporters in the kind of web/social savvy of news production we’ve learned, and we want to energize local news in markets where it is sorely needed.
Advantages: Our next launch can be a true learning lab — we use what we’ve tried so far, but can also leverage the teaching and research capabilities of a university to experiment and validate new techniques. We want to bring students into the mix in a pro-am environment. They can learn, work, and experiment along with the full-time staff we’ll be hiring. We believe there is a curriculum opportunity here for a university that is already teaching and experimenting with local news production. And you’d have startup veterans in your midst to speak to classes, advise students and do whatever else would help foster the entrepreneurial mindset that’s becoming so crucial to the future of journalism.
The collaboration would consist of the following: A member of the faculty to act as chief liaison with the new entity. This could involve creating a course that works as a live training/learning lab and involves students early on. The faculty member could also be involved as an editor that helps shape the editorial vision of the publication in conjunction with Spirited.
Students could be involved in a succession of editorial roles, culminating, in some cases, upon graduation, with full-time employment.
Space: We would want to embed the publication inside the school. Yes, this would reduce costs for Spirited, of course. But it would have benefits for the publication and the school by being able to tap into the energy of the students and create a live, real-time newsroom within the school.
We also believe that involving students early on in the process is essential to help us innovate, understand emerging media habits and opportunities, etc.
If you can’t provide space, that’s not a deal breaker. But we think it would be cool.
Precedent: Billy Penn’s first helping hand came from what is now the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, which literally housed our small newsroom from late summer 2014 through the end of the year, a period that included our launch. That physical space — an office suite in a classroom building, equipped with plenty of whiteboards and dry erase markers — was key to Billy Penn’s formative days. Temple has also embraced Billy Penn’s founders as adjunct professors, and provided a steady stream of smart, motivated interns who have enriched our reporting while gathering valuable experience at a city-based digital news operation.
The Knight Foundation, which sports a branch in every city where John S. and James L. Knight once owned a newspaper, was an important early champion of Billy Penn’s work in Philadelphia, the largest city where Knight operates a local office. Outside of Knight, Billy Penn’s partnership with Politifact to fact-check Pennsylvania began with a grant from the Democracy Fund. The Philadelphia Foundation sponsored our Who’s Next: Public Service list in 2016. And Billy Penn and The Incline are also member newsrooms with the grant-supported Report for America, which placed a full-time reporting fellow in Harrisburg for badly-needed state capitol coverage. The Denver Foundation has supported two events produced by Denverite around housing insecurity and homelessness, and renters’ issues in the Mile High City, and a collective of 18 Denver non-profits is funding a reporting position covering housing and hunger issues in Denver.
Our sites’ coverage model seeks to actively ask questions in order to help make our cities better via an informed citizenry. This aligns naturally with the work of most foundations, which can both fulfill their missions and support full-time journalists doing important work. We envision working jointly with our university partner to pursue fundraising opportunities.
What Partners Can Expect
- A new newsroom, covering your city in a different way than any existing media.
- A fantastic training ground for a regular coterie of interns from both the journalism and the business schools. This would mean getting a front-row seat for the build and launch of a next-generation digital news source in your city, not another digital startup in New York or Washington D.C.
- A seat for both the academic institution and foundation on a permanent advisory board we’ll assemble for each city. The site editor and company executive will convene this new group at least once per quarter so we can provide updates on financials, site coverage and community impact, and you can give us feedback on our progress.
Sign me up
To get started, send an email to chris(at)spiritedmedia(dot)com; we’re more than happy to chat.
