The Public Press
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:
$100,000Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$250,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
12 monthsThe Public Press is a startup nonprofit social venture in San Francisco that aims to start a noncommercial daily newspaper that is published Web-first, creating a new relationship between the online experience and printed page. We are planing a yearlong project with three objectives: 1. Build a standards-based Web platform on Drupal aggregating broadcast and online news for print and enabling easy exchange of content among local public media producers. 2. Assemble a coalition of journalism, civic and funding institutions to design a collaborative multimedia newsroom for San Francisco. 3. Build a detailed business/membership development plan for Web-only, weekly-print and daily-print rollout scenarios.
0 commentsHow will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Sustainable local journalism
The goal is to take advantage of the vital role that print continues to play in educating and unifying our geographic community, while introducing innovations that existing commercial papers are slow to adopt: 1. Instead of being print-centric, the Public Press will reverse-publish into print local online news from its own reporters and public broadcast partners, using automation and human editors. 2. Instead of answering to private owners who expect high profit margins, it will be a member-driven nonprofit civic institution. 3. Instead of relying on advertising, it will seek a hybrid model blending subscriptions, sales and local philanthropic support. 4. Instead of appealing to businesses through product-friendly reviews, it will be free to provide objective consumer and investigative reporting. 5. Instead of redlining poor communities in print distribution, it will target underserved readers, making civic education its highest priority.
0 commentsHow is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
Interactive print
We believe it is possible to redesign both the look and the editorial focus of daily newspapers around interactivity, ease of use and improved information architecture, areas that have advanced much more rapidly online than in print. A truly Web-first news strategy would involve the publication of several iterations of each story online, as well as the carefully labeled packaging of commentary into the news pages. It would also allow editors to write and juxtapose stories to enhance the use of comparative sourcing and multiple versions of stories from different perspectives, allowing readers to make up their own minds about controversial events and trends. These best practices are commonplace online, but newspapers have yet to incorporate them. But bringing an interactive element into the paper could help reengage a whole generation of readers, who have given up on mainstream news because of its traditional one-dimensional presentation.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
Journalism refugees and noncommercial partners
The Public Press as an organization was founded in November 2007 in San Francisco by a small but expanding circle of professional journalists, nonprofit managers, civic leaders and other concerned citizens, as one way to address the free-falling fortunes of the Bay Area newspaper business. We've had a tremendous positive response from volunteers since then and are in the midst of a strategic planning process and local fundraising initiative. We are on the cusp of receiving our first major foundation grant. Through a fundraising collaboration with the Knight Foundation-sponsored Spot.Us project, we expect to start publishing stories online in the fall at http://www.public-press.org. The Public Press is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that publishes News You Might Have Missed on Newsdesk.org. The biggest asset of the Public Press is its plan to collaborate with and repurpose news from our prospective content partners -- public broadcasters, online news sites, independent journalism centers, research institutions and freelance journalists, photographers and artists.
0 comments
