Texas Center For Community Journalism

When you think of AOL, your image is probably that of an Internet pioneer, now a major e-mail provider.  And the phrase you probably associate with AOL is the signature greeting, “You’ve got mail.”

So imagine the same voice, but this time he’s saying “You’ve got competition.”

AOL is now more than an Internet portal – now it’s also a content provider following the launch in 2009 of Patch, a network of news sites.  Currently there are more than 450 in 19 states throughout the nation, with 500 planned for the near future.  Each covers a community of between 20,000 and 50,000.

Patch was the biggest hirer of journalists in the United States in 2010 – each site has a full-time local editor, supplemented by freelancers.  Each site features free access, supported by local advertising.  And AOL’s pockets are deep enough to sustain losses while they wait for Patch to take hold.

Patch features a back-to-the-basics approach.  They have hyperlocal content – people news, local government, schools, crime, sports and the like.

I recently talked with Patch representatives about Texas – and the news there is that while there are no Patch sites in the Texas, we’re definitely on their radar.  And indeed, I notice that Patch is advertising to make a hire right now in Dallas.

Patch has claimed that it can come into a community and operate at 4.1 percent of your operating costs – remember, they don’t buy newsprint or pay for real estate.  The “office” of a Patch editor is his or her briefcase or backpack.  One Patch editor told a reporter for the Chicago Reader:  "Part of my job is being visible and accessible. It means I'm working in coffee shops all over my coverage area. I have a big Patch sticker on the back of my laptop, so when I'm working people can recognize me. Since my site is so young it's a mix of curiosity—'What is Patch?'—and 'Oh, you're the Patch girl. You look much younger.' I didn't explode on the scene, but I've found that as people discover my site they like it. And they come back."

So how seriously should Texas community newspapers look at Patch?  The jury’s still out on that until we see what Patch ends up doing in the state.  But the real issue here is not Patch – it’s the whole idea of online news operations that can provide competition while operating at a fraction of our costs. 

And that is a topic of concern for every print-first operation in Texas.

At the Center , we study community journalism and answer questions on community journalism and provide workshops on community journalism.  But as of last fall, we’re actually doing community journalism.

And what community are we covering in this city of three-quarters of a million people?  We’re covering a ZIP Code, 76109, which surrounds the TCU campus, where the Center is housed. This “community” has about 23,000 inhabitants and covers about eight square miles.

The whole project came about only last summer, when we were looking for opportunities to get our student journalists off campus to cover the city.  We adopted a community that didn’t exist — it consisted of lines on a Postal Service map.  And  if you asked someone from this area of south central Fort Worth where he or she was from, that person would never have said, “I’m from 76109.”

That’s changing.  We named our hyperlocal website The 109, from the last three numbers of the ZIP.   Our goal is to cover the people and events and trends of this area like no one else.  The old Atlanta Journal boasted that it covered Dixie like the dew – and we’re not exactly sure if there’s anything comparable that covers the 109, but you get the idea.

This ZIP is part of a large city, but our coverage area is only the 109.  Our reporters attend school board meetings, but we talk about the implications of votes taken for the 109.  We cover City Hall, but only those actions that relate to the 109.  Fort Worth had a big budget shortfall this year, for instance, but our focus was on service cuts and other implications for the 109.

During the November elections, we had reporters at polling places, doing stories on the 109’s precincts. We filed traditional stories and video pieces, news , features and a slideshow with lots of names and faces and opinions.

We even coined a word – at first, we called the people who lived here “residents of the 109.” Now?  They’re 109ers. Cheesy, but it has caught on.

We are using entirely open-source software and have built the entire site using Drupal, a free content management system available to website developers. We hope to learn a great deal about website deployment that we can apply to Texas community newspapers.

So please check out The 109. Friend us on Facebook to follow what we’re doing in our own venture into community journalism.  And let us know what you think.

As the year rapidly comes to a close, many publishers, GM’s and ad directors at community newspapers are putting the final touches on their 2011 ad revenue and budget forecasts.  And undertaking the forecasting endeavor can be a challenging, even frustrating process at times.

Over the years, I have developed a quick and easy template that helps develop ad revenue goals which then flow easily into an overall annual ad revenue and budget forecast.

Using the following formula to double-check or create an advertising revenue and budget forecast will save lots of time and effort while motivating sales teams and serving as a compass when navigating a tough economic environment.

Ad revenue goals, whether monthly and/or quarterly and/or annually, are all developed at the same time that annual ad revenue and budget goals are developed. In other words, 12 monthly 2011 individual monthly ad revenue goals for each territory or account list actually flow into the development of the total 2011 ad revenue goal (department wide) and ad budget.

For best results, a forecast is developed for every month in a given sales territory or account list. Additional items could be added or substituted (such as web page hosting revenue). Ad revenue goal revisions should and will take place over the course of the year due to market changes that may occur.

Ideally, each month is initially developed by the salesperson and subsequently reviewed and jointly agreed upon by salesperson and manager. The participation of the sales staff in this process helps motivate the staff, inasmuch as their input is included as part of setting goals for their territory or account list. Here's the formula:

Mark Horvit, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, shares tips on getting public information that officials don’t want to release. Mark’s instruction is adapted from a workshop hosted by the Texas Center for Community Journalism on investigative reporting at community newspapers.