A PLAN TO KEEP JOURNALISM IN SEATTLE--The Packers model
Summary: We are a group of P-I journalists. Our goal is to allow P-I reporters to continue serving Seattle by serving as watchdog and informing the public on such key issues as city politics, helping people navigate the current economic crisis, the environment, and education. Additionally, we intend to continue the work of recognizable writers as Robert Jamieson, Mike Lewis, Art Thiel, and many others.
In this economic climate, we believe our role to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” has never been as important, and we intend to use lessons learned by a generation of community bloggers in expanding the idea of the work done by professional journalists.
Should the Seattle Post-Intelligencer close, we intend to begin a news website to fill the void left in our community. We hope that Hearst Corp. will start an online-only P-I that performs the important role the newspaper has played in this community, but we stand ready to continue our work for the public interest.
We are currently seeking start-up funding but are planning to start the site in advance of receiving it. We are asking the community what sort of journalism it wants in Seattle, and to show support donations to our non-profit entity, the Seattle PostGlobe. In the interim, about 20 journalists are prepared to work as a volunteers until funding is raised.
Let us know what you think of this plan. We intend to start raising money at launch to begin paying our journalists as soon as possible. We're betting that this community will want to keep us doing the work we do. Please email us at SeattlePostGlobe@yahoo.com with your pledges so we can get an idea of the support we can expect to receive. Please consider pledging the $250 many of you are already paying to subscribe to the paper.
We also need the community's help -- particularly people with legal, business, and fundraising expertise. We'd like to hear what kind of online daily paper you want to see.
We are at a historic moment. Communities are watching their newspapers close and the level and amount of information available to the public diminish. It’s time for communities, beginning with this one, to support professional full-time journalists in much the same way that communities believe the continued existence of public radio and television are worthy of public financial support.
Therefore, after the initial launch of the site, we are planning to explore an array of options to create a sustainable business model, including a model loosely based on the Green Bay Packers football team.
We are exploring the creation of a co-operative that will be operated by a combination of the Seattle PostGlobe’s employees, and the community.
The cooperative will be funded initially through selling memberships in much the same way that other co-operatives, including Group Health and REI, operate. Subsequent annual membership fees will provide a large source of funding for the operation. At a time when other communities are helplessly watching their newspapers disappear, this community will not have its journalism subject to decisions made in boardrooms thousands of miles away.
In addition to memberships, we intend to explore other avenues for funding, including advertising, corporate sponsorships, as well as partnerships with other community blogs, community newspapers and other media outlets.
This is an uncertain time for newspapers, but we believe the problem lies in the traditional economic model of newspapers and their delivery method. The importance and thirst for information is still there.
We are looking at non-profit sites like Voice of San Diego and MinnPost, which are considered industry models. But we’d expand on their models by trying to inspire community spirit around the idea that this would be their community’s news organization. Unlike the other start-ups, we could begin with the advantage of already having customers.
FIRST PHASE:
The P-I is expected to stop a print edition of the newspaper and possibly close around March 18, calling for some immediate action. There are a number of interesting ideas (explored below) that we will pursue after our launch, but none of the ideas are doable in our timeframe.
We plan to launch a daily online news site the day after the P-I closes. We will put the question to the community: how important is it to have the work continue?
We are currently seeking startup funding to pay our journalists and to hire a business consultant to lend expertise to the effort and work on the creation of a cooperative.
For detailed cost breakdown, see attachment A
Just $250,000 would pay for a three-person staff made up of a business manager focusing on fundraising and working with experts from the community to create the cooperative; three reporters focusing on city politics and helping people navigate the economy. The reporters would also share administrative, web, and editing, fundraising duties, as well as working with a $6,000/mo fundraising budget ($125,000).

The $250,000 in startup funds would also pay for a business consultant and cover the expected legal fees associated with the creating the Packers model cooperative.

With $375,000, we would operate a larger staff, with six full-time employees and a larger freelance budget for six months. In addition to the city hall and economy reporters, the money would allow us to fund the following additional positions: columnist, a full-time editor/webmaster, an investigative reporter, and and an environmental reporter. It would increase our freelance budget for photographers and reporters covering other areas of interest ($250,000). It would allow us to hire the consultant and cover the legal fees.

With $675,000 in start-up funds, we could operate the larger staff for a year, and pay for the consulting and legal fees for the first year of operation. And so on. The more journalism the community is willing to support, the more journalism it will get.

BUILDING UP THE STAFF
Should we not raise start-up funds, the site will launch with an all-volunteer staff for two months. During that time, the community will have to opportunity to decide what level of journalism it wants for Seattle. Based on our ability to raise the above funds, we will ramp up our staffing, according to the following schedule.
Initial bare-bones budget:
Annual budget: $250,000 –or $20,000/mo -- midpoint between MinnPost and Voice of San Diego’s small donor revenue.
As money is raised, we would build up the staff, according to the schedule above.
Additionally, each $250,000 increment raised would go towards increasing the news operation.
We believe our fundraising goals are conservative, as they do not include other revenue sources such as major donors, advertising and foundation grants. We do intend to pursue those sources as well.
The initial $250,00 represents less than 1 percent of the money raised by the P-I's 129,563 daily subscribers, who pay $234 a year. Should the same number of people – whether or not they currently subscribe to the P-I – donate the cost of a subscription, annual revenue would be $30.3 million. Though many may choose not to pay the same amount to an online-only publication, reaching the $250,000 threshold would require only 1,068 people, or .8 of one percent of current subscribers, to pay the same amount as they already do.



COMPARISON WITH WHAT'S WORKING
MinnPost:
MinnPost’s message to the community is simple:
High-quality journalism is not just a consumer good, and we can
no longer depend only on the private sector to provide it.
High-quality journalism is a community asset, the underpinning of
democracy, community, and quality of life. Minnesotans who care
about it need to support it, every way they can.

MinnPost’s plan for long-term sustainability depends on
three major sources of revenue: sponsorships and advertising,
membership support including an annual fundraising event, and
targeted foundation grants.

In 2008, MinnPost received a total of $837,000 in revenues
including $338,000 in philanthropic support, $290,000 in
membership support, $162,000 in sponsorship and advertising,
and $47,000 in net proceeds from MinnRoast 2008 and other events.

Minn Post started in Nov. 2007 with $1.45 million: start-up donated capital, $850,000 from four Minnesota families including Kramer's, $250,000 from the Knight Foundation, $350,000 from other donors.

Staffing: mainly freelancers
NEWS STAFF -- Five editors, three full-time reporters, 60 contributors: news staff. MinnPost.com who receive $100 for a publishable post and $500 for a front-page quality story. Most have other paying gigs on the side.

From interview with founder Joel Kramer: The freelance model appears to be working very well. Less than a handful of our original contributors have left us, and we have added many new ones, including younger ones, so we have more contributors today than when we launched. The freelance model enables us to feature a large number of talented people, with their different areas of expertise. We have, however, moved two reporters to full

Average number of new articles per day: 12

Voice of San Diego:
Started Feb. 9, 2005. Taking the very long view, we have more revenue streams available to us than do most media operations. We have the nonprofit streams long used by public broadcasting: foundation grants, corporate sponsors and membership drives.
Civic-minded San Diego residents are realizing that journalism at its core is a public-service institution and, as it is threatened, they're going to have to fund it like they've funded so many other causes they care about, just like the museum or soup kitchen.
Funding:
Started in 2005 with a budget of $350,000, mostly in seed money from one funder, and employed a staff of four -- an editor, two reporters and an office manager.
Current budget has grown to $830,000. However, it will be expanding to $990,000 shortly after getting a couple of grants.
-- Advertising and corporate sponsorship: 10 percent. (We expect this to grow tremendously this year. Before now, it's all been passive. Just this month we brought our first ad sales person on. We had previously just focused our efforts on nonprofit efforts.) About $8,300
-- Major Donors: 40 percent. (This is a handful of large donors, the kind of people you get the most bang for your buck. Local business giants turned philanthropists.) $332,200
-- Foundation grants: 25 percent. (Local and national foundations that fund everything from local quality of life, environment and journalism in general.)
-- Donations: 25 percent. These are the people gave anywhere from $35 to $10,000.
Staffing: mainly staff-based with some freelancers
Staff has grown to 11, including nine professional journalists who makes $35,000 to roughly $70,000. It also employs a stable of experienced freelance writers.
Coverage:
Created to fill the gaps being left by the existing media. Those gaps have grown at a rapid pace since then.
What it looks to do is fill those gaps by doing exclusive investigative and in-depth reporting into core San Diego quality-of-life issues: politics, education, housing/economy, environment, public safety and science/technology (a vital piece of the local economy and culture).
It doesn’t cover anything unless they can do it better than anyone or no one else is doing it. It can be tempting to try to be everything to everyone, but then you end up a mile wide and an inch deep.
Started off basically with an exclusive focus on political/government reporting, and have slowly taken on new subjects as they've increased staff size.

SITUATION IN SEATTLE

Revenues and sources-subscriptions, newsstand, advertising, other, geographic distribution

Initially we’d rely on a pledge drive around the idea of continuing the P-I’s work. We believe $250,000 is conservative and the potential exists for a much larger staff, considering:

* The P-I currently has 129,563 daily subscribers who pay $234 a year. Should the same number of people – whether or not they currently subscribe to the P-I – donate the cost of a subscription, annual revenue would be $30.3 million.
One consideration is that unlike other startups like Crosscut, the online successor to the P-I already has a proven market, in which customers are willing to pay for the information. We’re assuming 1/15th of revenue from current subscribers
Public radio gives a glimpse of other potential revenue. Since non-profits are restricted in selling advertising, public radio raised money from corporate sponsors in lieu of advertising. KPLU’s former corporate sponsorship person, who was part of the station’s development team, believes that raising similar amounts is realistic.
* KPLU, according to its annual report, raised $2.9 million in pledges from its listeners, again above our projected budget. It raised a total of $7.1 million, including corporate sponsorships and foundation grants, which we intend to purse as well.
* KUOW, according to its annual report, raised a total of $8.7 million, of which $4.6 million came from listeners – again far more than our projected budget

KPLU
A. Listener Support ....................... $2,998,604
B. Corporate Sponsorship ............. $2,074,371
C. Donated Facilities and General Support from PLU ... $1,124,344
D. Foundations & Grants .................. $172,688
E. Other Income ............................... $209,521
F. CPB Community Service Grant ...... $571,477
Support and Revenue ................ $7,151,005

KUOW

Individual support $4.6 million
Business support $2.7 million
Institutional support: $715,000
Other support: $584, 000
Total: $8.7 million