toward a free press: an online publisher's toolkit
TRANSCRIPT
“Quit counting fans, followers and blog
subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead,
about what you’re hoping to achieve with
and through the community that actually
cares about what you’re doing.”
Amber Naslund, Social Media Today
Intent – What is your intention with an
online news site?
What am I interested in? What do I love
talking about?
Need to balance intention against
financial viability
Christopher Spencer: Born in El Dorado, lives in Fayetteville
A journalist since 1998
Worked for the El Dorado News Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
and The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas
Publisher of Ozarks Unbound (June 2009), The Food File.com (April
2010) and Ballotbucks.org (April 2010)
500 to 700 hits a day 75 to 100 hits a day
Love politics and love covering creative folks – Ozarks Unbound
[Broad group, but affluent – lower financial viability]
Holding politicians accountable – Ballotbucks.org
[Very focused niche group – high financial viability]
Love food, eating, watching people make food – The Food File
[Medium focused group, but trendy now – reasonable financial viability]
Block By Block: Community News Summit 2010 Sept. 23 – 24. #bxb2010
Patch, American Towns, Everyblock – Larger scale attempts to get in the game
Local efforts: Ozarks Unbound, Fayetteville Flyer, Arkansas Blog (Arkansas Times), Argenta Times (defunct), The City Wire (Fort Smith), First Arkansas News, Monticello Live, Newport Independent, Washington County Observer
Less about flash and bang and more
about endurance
Need to make viewing your site part of
their daily routine.
Been in the game for more than one
year and seen several sites emerge and
flame out.
Server account - $15 a month with Fused
Networks
30 Gigs bandwidth and 3 Gigs disk space.
Need a free ftp program (i.e. Filezilla)
WordPress (The central wheel)
An amazing Content Management System:
Free and Priceless
36 active plugins right now making my site
do what it does. All are free.
Open Office (Equivalent to Microsoft
Word)
I write in WordPress but Open Office is
great free software for word processing
Gimp (Equivalent to Adobe Photoshop)
Use it daily to process, retouch and remix
images
Ethics on images – Be sure you follow
copyright on the images. Google images,
istockphoto
Google Reader (Equivalent to AP Wire)
My personalized wire service. An area on
my site dedicated to headlines from other
sites, called Clipped Fresh
Audacity (Equivalent to Garage Band)
For audio remixing. Use it about once a
month to remix interviews or sound I
gather
Inkscape (Equivalent to Adobe Illustrator)
For vector-based graphics – creating a
square or other design
Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Perfect for pushing out content – headlines
and interacting with readers, bringing new
people to the site through organic
searches
Price Tag
A laptop
$70 – Cyberdirector$200 – Camera$200 – iphone$40 – Voice recorder$15 – Tripod$10 – Name with lanyard$35 – business cards
$570 - Total