California Newspaper Starts Citizens´ Publication
Looking for a new model for citizen produced news, see the open source newspaper that The Bakersfield Californian has started. Below is a report from Mary Lou Fulton, Publisher of The Northwest Voice, and New Product Development Manager, The Bakersfield Californian. She will provide more information on this experiment at the Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism conference on Aug. 3 in Toronto.
This from Fulton:
The Northwest Voice is a new community publication in which nearly all the content is contributed by people in the community through our Web site.
Our policy is to accept all content contributions, provided they are local and legal. We publish everything on the Web and include as many items as possible in our biweekly print edition delivered free to 22,000 households in Northwest Bakersfield, the fastest growing area of the city. The Voice is owned by a division of The Bakersfield Californian, but we operate independently of the daily and are distributed separately.
The Voice launched in May and we have already had more than 200 individuals contribute articles, pictures, events, church news, commentaries and even recipes. Pictures have been our most popular type of content contribution. We’ve been very pleased with the initial response and readers have been extremely enthusiastic about The Voice because they say it feels like home to them, with so many familiar faces and places on every page. Advertising has been growing quickly, as well, with revenue up 31 percent since launch. We’re not making money yet, but we anticipate getting to operational breakeven this fall if the initial trends remain consistent.
Because this model is relatively new to journalism, I have received many questions about how and why we took this approach. I created a web site, that has the background on our business planning, technology, staffing and other details. Of course, the best way to understand The Voice is to check out The Northwest Voice and see what the community is up to.
I’m very much looking forward to the conference. Thanks for your interest in The Voice and I’ll see you in Toronto in a few weeks.
