Comments on: The New Metros

By: jestevens

jestevens — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:04:51 +0000

@Illinoiswriter — Jurnos can pay their bill by inviting local business to buy advertising. That approach is working at WestSeattleBlog.com, QuincyNews.org, and BaristaNet, and we’re finding more. The post I did on Tuesday, Feb. 24, — A Modest Proposal for the Seattle Times — goes into that a bit. In an upcoming post, I’ll provide more details.

By: Hypercrit » Jane Stevens and the mini-metro

Hypercrit » Jane Stevens and the mini-metro — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:13:39 +0000

[...] But vacuums are fragile, and they don’t last long. Something will fill the journalism void left by the closure of big papers, and Jane Stevens at Rejurno thinks the likely filler will be what she calls “mini-metros.” [...]

By: Jane Stevens: Mini-metros will replace today’s metro newspapers | BeatBlogging.Org

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:57:34 +0000

[...] its place “mini-metros” will form where metros once reigned supreme, Stevens said. These mini-metros will be niche [...]

By: illinoiswriter

illinoiswriter — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:32:00 +0000

So how do these new Jurnos pay their bills? Where’s the money?

This sounds ambitious. It can’t be sustained without lots and lots of smart, hardworking people getting paid lots and lots of money.

By: Readings for 2-6-09 « Online Journalism: Fridays 2009

Readings for 2-6-09 « Online Journalism: Fridays 2009 — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:35:13 +0000

[...] than it may seem “There’s no more inspiring time to be a journalist” Why I Blog The New Metros New local sites emerge as [...]

By: jestevens

jestevens — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:03:35 +0000

I think those weeklies CAN be the niche Web sites for their communities. And should be. They’re in the perfect position to begin to make this transition — they know their communities, they can begin engaging people in the communities to provide information. But it’s clear if they don’t, someone else will. This doesn’t meant that print goes away; it just becomes something different than what it is now.

By: davidllee

davidllee — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:16:26 +0000

This almost reminds me of the situation in small-town communities with weekly papers. Their focus is ultra-local (when the town is the size of a neighborhood within a larger metropolitian area) and the weeklies I follow appear to be doing decently financially.
Those same weeklies do still rely on staff to gather news instead of getting more community input. (At weekly I used to work at, my publisher said he wanted a limited web presence, because he’d otherwise lose money if people didn’t buy the paper, and he couldn’t sell ads at the prices he wanted due to declining circulation.)
Any thoughts on how the small-town weeklies might transition over to a better/bigger online presence, or do you think they’ll go the way of metros eventually, and be replaced by niche web sites/blogs?

By: Readings for 2-5-09 « Online Journalism: Thursdays 2009

Readings for 2-5-09 « Online Journalism: Thursdays 2009 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:52:14 +0000

[...] is brighter than it may seem “There’s no more inspiring time to be a journalist” The New Metros New local sites emerge as [...]

By: ReJurno: ‘The New Metros’ - local journalism or ‘nichification on steroids?’ | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:39:34 +0000

[...] she asks. “Many small ones. Mini-metros. Nichification on steroids,” she begins… Full story… (also picked up at the Knight Digital Media Center [...]

By: bonnieandjosh

bonnieandjosh — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:07:01 +0000

Thanks Jane! The proposal sounds like it has a lot of the same initial goals of the Representative Journalism Project (http://repjbonnie.wordpress.com/). Since July, I think we’ve even tried out a few of Jane’s ideas. I’m curious to see her ideas, or the ideas of others, about how to make it all work, from disseminating factual news to creating a job that would be attractive to skilled journalists to creating a product that simply looks good and is fun.