3 ms·

I run a company that has a bunch of small-town local news websites and we run into this all the time. It takes money to keep a website running. And in order for

I run a company that has a bunch of small-town local news websites and we run into this all the time. It takes money to keep a website running. And in order for people to have the time to go into the field chasing down stories, they need to get paid. And our own advertising that we run to get and retain readers costs us real money. But where does/should our money come from? Right now we're get some money from businesses advertising on our sites, but it's small money because it's small businesses in small towns. Just enough to keep the lights on, with a little left over for reinvestment into the company's mission. None of the founders have taken even a single paycheck. And taking business's money makes me nervous because I feel pressure on every article we write to make sure we're business-friendly to not scare away advertisers, which is not a good pressure for a news company to have. And in towns of 5k-10k residents, your audience is limited to the point where referral ads or Google ads are pointless. Probably half of our company meetings have some kind of "where are we going to get money" conversations.

bovermyer 7y ago
This is a vital mission and one I'm intensely curious about. I previously was a devops engineer and manager for a large regional newspaper, so this issue is near and dear to my heart. What part of the world do you operate in?
- freehunter 7y ago
  I spoke more about the company recently in another thread [1]. The company is called Citieo [2]. We're based out of Michigan. We work with tiny towns (usually less than 10k people, average is about 5500 residents) that have downtowns already built but the majority of their population leaves to spend their money and their time elsewhere. Our public-facing presence is a digital media outlet (website, app, facebook) for each city we cover, but most of our work is done face-to-face with local business owners, the Chamber of Commerce, and the city government. We see a lot of NIMBY-ism and fear propagated on social media and in outlets like Next Door/Citizen/Neighbors, and we want to foster a real life community in your real life downtown. Outdoor, face to face. We still have a lot of work to do (a lot of work) but we're a pretty small organization working as hard as we can with not a lot of money. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19971460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19971460 [2] https://citieo.com/posts/citieo-real-life https://citieo.com/posts/citieo-real-life
  - bovermyer 7y ago
    That's an impressive goal. A friend of mine who lives in Spencer, IA is faced with the problem you describe, and is working to combat it. I'm curious about Citieo and Soli; I'll send an email to the support address on your website, if that's alright.

bovermyer 7y ago

This is a vital mission and one I'm intensely curious about. I previously was a devops engineer and manager for a large regional newspaper, so this issue is near and dear to my heart. What part of the world do you operate in?

freehunter 7y ago
I spoke more about the company recently in another thread [1]. The company is called Citieo [2]. We're based out of Michigan. We work with tiny towns (usually less than 10k people, average is about 5500 residents) that have downtowns already built but the majority of their population leaves to spend their money and their time elsewhere. Our public-facing presence is a digital media outlet (website, app, facebook) for each city we cover, but most of our work is done face-to-face with local business owners, the Chamber of Commerce, and the city government. We see a lot of NIMBY-ism and fear propagated on social media and in outlets like Next Door/Citizen/Neighbors, and we want to foster a real life community in your real life downtown. Outdoor, face to face. We still have a lot of work to do (a lot of work) but we're a pretty small organization working as hard as we can with not a lot of money. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19971460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19971460 [2] https://citieo.com/posts/citieo-real-life https://citieo.com/posts/citieo-real-life
- bovermyer 7y ago
  That's an impressive goal. A friend of mine who lives in Spencer, IA is faced with the problem you describe, and is working to combat it. I'm curious about Citieo and Soli; I'll send an email to the support address on your website, if that's alright.