Block by Block: Imagining the Sequel(s)
"The online community news leaders and their shared passion for local news was the most impressive part of Block by Block: Community News Summit 2010. More impressive - and challenging - is where local editors and publishers take it from here."
Michele McLellan - Knight Digital Media Center
What I heard about community news at Block by Block
"'New' journalists have a lot to learn from those who came before them. Many community news folks I’ve talked to say they are striving for an intimate relationship with their communities, something they think is missing from legacy newsrooms."
Joy Mayer - Reynolds Fellow, RJI Blog
Block by Block 2010: Time for the next steps
"Folks, we have a movement, but we have no tangible support."
Susan Mernit
Pramas Proposes Joining ONA
"once a number of us have joined ONA, we push to get votes for Susan Mernit and Michelle McLellan for the ONA board."
Chuck Welch
LONCs -- local online news community entrepreneurs, move closer to formal collaboration after Chicago confab
"The key need identified by the 70 or more entrepreneurs -- some "for profit" and some "non-profit" in organization -- was a way to bring in more revenues, whether by advertising, donations, sponsorships, subscriptions, staging events or other innovations."
Bill Densmore - Media Giraffe project
Taking It to the Next Level
"The Next Level is a more secure place where they know they’ll be around for another year and might even have funds to hire a community manager, pay the editor and even some staffers. The Next Level involves better ways to engage users and let them know you exist and ways to turn these hard-work efforts into genuine businesses."
Jan Schaffer - J-Lab
Block by Block: Once you’ve launched, what’s Phase 2 of a community news startup?
"Jay Rosen called it 'entrepreneur atomization overcome.' And, for an event that put nearly 100 formerly disconnected community news publishers together in one place, it’s an apt description."
Megan Garber – Nieman Journal
Money, Volunteers, Money, Patch, and Money
"These are the entrepreneurs who are inventing new models of journalism on the local level. They already know how to do good journalism. They just need help staying alive. 'Five years ago, just getting started was a big challenge,' said McLellan. 'Starting isn’t hard anymore. Now it’s about how to get to the next level.'"
Lauren Kirchner – Columbia Journalism Review
An update from Charlottesville Tomorrow on the non-profit news sector
"A big take away was that Charlottesville Tomorrow is not alone. There are thousands of people around the country working on hyper-local news sites. Many are 1-2 person operations run by former journalists who lost their jobs in the newspaper industry. They have launched over the past 6 years as both for-profit and non-profit companies trying to fill an information gap in their community. At over five years, Charlottesville Tomorrow is among the veterans in this group."
Brian Wheeler - Charlottesville Tomorrow
A Summary of the Block by Block
"The 'gorilla in the room', as Potts put it, are sites like AOL’s Patch.com, coming into markets and scaring some people."
Polly Kreisman - Lostremote
Community News Start-Ups 2010: Where do we go from here?
"For those of us watching the online news start-up space closely over the past few years—seeing traditional news outlets shrink, close or adjust, and the rise of independent community news—we should head into this conference with optimism. In a relatively short time (following the mass news job losses and advertising revenue declines from 2007-09) the American news industry is showing promise in the digital age. A short survey of industry themes reveals journalists, news consumers, academia, investors and the public sector are committed to sustaining emerging forms of journalism."
Jessica Durkin - New America's Media Policy Initiative
Online news experts descend on Chicago
"At the Workshop we’re excited to serve as a neutral hub for this emerging sector, and we applaud the amazing work happening in Chicago. We also challenge funders to continue to support ambitious journalism–the kind that helps diverse communities, that tells the stories that may never have been told well by traditional media. Philanthropic support should aim to support a sustainable, thriving online news ecosystem that is ethical, comprehensive and accessible by all Chicagoans."
Community Media Workshop
For-profit, non-profit and ???
"There were moments at #BXB2010 in Chicago on Friday when it felt like a religious war was about to break out. At any minute I expected somebody to yell 'PC' and somebody to answer 'Mac! Damit!'
The clear divide in the room was over how to fund journalism. On one side there were the advertising-supported sites, and on the other, the donation-supported sites."
Howard Owens - personal blog
Bit by bit, "Block by Block," small online news publishers find their way
"I discovered last week that I’m not alone – there are dozens of entrepreneurs across the United States who are charting a new course in the universe of online journalism."
Anne Galloway - vtdigger.org
Journalism as a sharing experience
"It is the idea of sharing – something that seems to come instinctively to these community site publishers – that is so striking to me. As someone who grew up professionally in a newspaper newsroom, I’m much more familiar with journalists who wanted to compete than to share."
Janet Coats - Patterson Foundation
Block By Block
Probably the most useful break-away session for me was the one on Engagement, expertly moderated by David Cohn (Twitter) of Spot.us. About 30 people in the room exchanged their experiences – what they did to engage their local communities, what worked, and most importantly what were their biggest failures (and why, with 20-20 hindsight, were those things failures).
Bora Zivkovic - Science in the Triangle
PATCH: SCARED YET?
What scares some is that Patch could poach stories, resources and advertisers. I think Patch ought to address the first two concerns whenever they go into new communities. Patch must come in as an ally and a good neighbor. Patch editors must abide by the rules of the blogging roads just like everyone else. If they do not they will find themselves with less traffic and little good will from locals and local businesses.
Ben - Sloan
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