Columbia Journalism School features CCLP case study

Describing it as “a powerful new case on the business of media,” the Columbia Journalism School announced that it will feature CCLP’s research work on the Long Beach Post as a new case study for use in its prestigious Knight Case Studies Initiative. The case study, The Jury is Out: The Long Beach Post and Online Local News, is authored by CCLP Executive-in-Residence Jeffrey S. Klein and Research Associate María J. Vázquez. The report is available for journalism educators and students throughout the country and will be used as a teaching resource on the future of online community news websites…….

15 Ways to Generate Revenue for a Community News Web Site

My co-author María J. Vázquez and I recently finished writing a case study on a hyperlocal community news site in Long Beach California, the Long Beach Post. As with so many of these entrepreneurial sites, the founders were doing a great job of journalism and technology. The challenge was on the business and sales side. How do you effectively generate revenues to sustain the enterprise? Here are 15 suggestions to consider if you are building a community news web business, or any web content business for that matter. 1. Webinar. Find a topic of interest to an audience and a……

Journalism entrepreneurship on the hyperlocal level – a case study in community news

“There is a profound crisis taking place in American journalism.” That is the introductory line to the case study being published today by the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. My coauthor, María Vázquez, and I hope that this case, which focuses on the real life trials and tribulations of a four year old community news web site in a suburb of Los Angeles, will add to the admittedly parse academic literature on what some people call “hyper-local news”. Existing news magazines and newspapers face serious threats to their continued profitability and viability. The future outlook for local……

Boot Camp for Journalism Entrepreneurs

Last week, I was an instructor at the News Entrepreneur Boot Camp 2010 at USC. Sponsored by the Knight Digital Media Center, USC Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, theAnnenberg Center for Communication Leadership and Public Policy(CCLP), and the Online Journalism Review, the camp brought together about 20 aspiring entrepreneurs, almost all former journalists, who are trying to create new news/information enterprises in the digital world. If you'd like to watch a video of my session, click here [from the Knight Digital Media Center], or take a look at my power point slides [below]…….

Will community news sites keep growing?

A few of my newspaper editor friends have tweaked me recently about the reporting I've done on community news Web sites. All had the same question: Given these sites' mostly tiny size (audience, news content, revenue), haven't I been hyping their impact a bit? It's a fair question. So is a related one that also comes up. Aren't many of these sites likely to fail because, despite valiant efforts by their creators, they'll be unable to generate sustainable advertising revenue? Since coming to USC Annenberg last fall, I've reported extensively on the rise of community Web sites, in posts at……