{"id":163,"date":"2018-02-03T16:21:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T22:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/natkale.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2018-02-03T16:21:53","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T22:21:53","slug":"local-cooperative-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"Local Cooperative Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Local news is in decline.\u00a0 Stories of local papers being consolidated into titanic media conglomerates, shedding staff, cutting back on reporting, or all three are ubiquitous.<\/p>\n

This puts people who want quality local news in a bind.\u00a0 The only way to support your local paper is to buy it, but who wants to pay for crap content?\u00a0 I think this is where the cooperative model<\/a> (maybe not-for-profit, but not necessarily) could step in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Restructuring local news under the co-op model solves the bind, by giving subscribers a say in how the paper is managed.\u00a0 The standard profit model was always a bad fit for small local news organizations anyway; after all, how much competition can there possibly be among newspapers in small towns?\u00a0 Co-ops are better in these near-monopoly conditions, because they’re more responsive to their members than companies with a monopoly are to their customers.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, lots of potential problems with co-op news.\u00a0 Some major ones are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Putting together the capital to create a co-op in the first place.<\/li>\n
  2. Structuring the organization so that journalistic integrity is preserved, even in the face of membership displeasure.<\/li>\n
  3. Maintaining financial viability.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    #1 is a challenge, but in the past 10-15 years or so the exact conditions that have been putting pressure on standard local news operations actually make funding a cooperative news organization easier.\u00a0 A news organization isn’t dependent on heavy machinery any longer (no need for printing presses), and prioritizing online content means the physical assets required to start up a paper are minimal.<\/p>\n

    Crowdfunding is the other half of the answer to #1.\u00a0 Rather than relying on a benefactor or trying to convince a bank to give out a risky loan, startup cash can come directly from the initial members.\u00a0 This has the secondary benefit of gauging the degree of interest in the venture – if crowdfunding fails, maybe the news co-op isn’t meant to be.<\/p>\n

    #2 – preserving journalistic integrity – is a challenge for any news organization, usually addressed by maintaining a “wall” between advertising (revenue) and content.\u00a0 Hopefully a co-op news organization would rely more on subscriptions and less on ads, potentially reducing that conflict.\u00a0 Still, the potential exists for the organization to be taken over by a particular interest group and run for them.\u00a0 A strong editor, picked for their journalistic abilities and not subject to having each of their decisions individually scrutinized by a board, would mitigate this possibility.\u00a0 In reality, though, there is no way to completely fend off the danger.<\/p>\n

    #3 – financial viability – is in many ways the simplest challenge to address (though not the easiest).\u00a0 It’s a case of setting up membership, subscription, and advertising rates that are realistic and maintainable.<\/p>\n

    Let’s take Thurston County as a test case.\u00a0 Assuming such an organization starts with a bare-bones staff of one editor and two journalists, realistic yearly costs might be $300k (assumes about $100k\/year for each staff member, including salary, benefits, and associated overhead like software, office rental, etc.).\u00a0 Thurston County has about 275k residents.\u00a0 You would want to launch the organization with 3-6 months of operating expenses, so you would aim for a Kickstarter campaign of at least $75k, and hope for more like $150k.\u00a0 You would also want enough revenue to cover costs, obviously.\u00a0 If you were to aim for about 1% of the Thurston County population, that would put monthly subscription rates at $9\/month – a reasonable proposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Local news is in decline.\u00a0 Stories of local papers being consolidated into titanic media conglomerates, shedding staff, cutting back on reporting, or all three are ubiquitous. This puts people who want quality local news in a bind.\u00a0 The only way to support your local paper is to buy it, but who wants to pay for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natkale.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}