“Quit counting fans, followers and blog

subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead,

about what you’re hoping to achieve with

and through the community that actually

cares about what you’re doing.”

Amber Naslund, Social Media Today

Intent – What is your intention with an

online news site?

What am I interested in? What do I love

talking about?

Need to balance intention against

financial viability

Christopher Spencer: Born in El Dorado, lives in Fayetteville

A journalist since 1998

Worked for the El Dorado News Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

and The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas

Publisher of Ozarks Unbound (June 2009), The Food File.com (April

2010) and Ballotbucks.org (April 2010)

500 to 700 hits a day 75 to 100 hits a day

Love politics and love covering creative folks – Ozarks Unbound

[Broad group, but affluent – lower financial viability]

Holding politicians accountable – Ballotbucks.org

[Very focused niche group – high financial viability]

Love food, eating, watching people make food – The Food File

[Medium focused group, but trendy now – reasonable financial viability]

Block By Block: Community News Summit 2010 Sept. 23 – 24. #bxb2010

Patch, American Towns, Everyblock – Larger scale attempts to get in the game

Local efforts: Ozarks Unbound, Fayetteville Flyer, Arkansas Blog (Arkansas Times), Argenta Times (defunct), The City Wire (Fort Smith), First Arkansas News, Monticello Live, Newport Independent, Washington County Observer

Source: Pew Research Center

Less about flash and bang and more

about endurance

Need to make viewing your site part of

their daily routine.

Been in the game for more than one

year and seen several sites emerge and

flame out.

Server account - $15 a month with Fused

Networks

30 Gigs bandwidth and 3 Gigs disk space.

Need a free ftp program (i.e. Filezilla)

WordPress (The central wheel)

An amazing Content Management System:

Free and Priceless

36 active plugins right now making my site

do what it does. All are free.

Open Office (Equivalent to Microsoft

Word)

I write in WordPress but Open Office is

great free software for word processing

Gimp (Equivalent to Adobe Photoshop)

Use it daily to process, retouch and remix

images

Ethics on images – Be sure you follow

copyright on the images. Google images,

istockphoto

Google Reader (Equivalent to AP Wire)

My personalized wire service. An area on

my site dedicated to headlines from other

sites, called Clipped Fresh

Audacity (Equivalent to Garage Band)

For audio remixing. Use it about once a

month to remix interviews or sound I

gather

Inkscape (Equivalent to Adobe Illustrator)

For vector-based graphics – creating a

square or other design

Scribus (Equivalent to Adobe Indesign)

For document layout, print layout

Cyberlink Director ($70)

For editing video. Do use this often, but

only superficial features

Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

Perfect for pushing out content – headlines

and interacting with readers, bringing new

people to the site through organic

searches

Still camera/video camera, voice recorder,

tripod, iphone, press pass, business cards

Price Tag

A laptop

$70 – Cyberdirector$200 – Camera$200 – iphone$40 – Voice recorder$15 – Tripod$10 – Name with lanyard$35 – business cards

$570 - Total

Who is ready to give the Jonesboro Sun the

first competition they’ve felt in 50 years?

Let’s plot our media domination together

Any Questions?