During the weekend, members of Local Independent Online News Publishers met in Philadelphia for a conference. You can find a doc with collective notes from the weekend here. It includes technical guides and legal guides and answers to how different sites have raised money and dealt with employment questions.
The doc was organized by Josh Stearns, director of journalism and sustainability for the The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. It includes some tips from Jim Brady’s session on Billy Penn. Brady, a Poynter National Advisory Board member, is the founder of Billy Penn.
These tips accompany Brady’s session on “Millennials and Mobile.”
Tactic 1: Don’t chase stories everyone else is chasing. You cannot be – should not try to be – a comprehensive source.
Tactic 2: Use curation to provide that comprehensiveness. Linking out is core to the Web.
Tactic 3: Don’t get too tied to the routine stories (fires, crimes, traffic) and before assigning any story think about the shelf life of the story… what is the long tail? Will anyone care in a week?
Tactic 4: But when a huge story happens in your back yard – own it.
Tactic 5: Partner with anyone and everyone to get exposed (Philly athlete bracket with local Fox station, Comcast+Everyblock partnership.)
Tactic 6: Don’t be afraid to do crazy stuff to get noticed and try some things out. (Weekly news playlist – all the news in song version for the past week.)
