Just two years ago, TippNews DAILY began publishing online photos of soccer games, stories about 50th wedding anniversaries, and fender-benders on Main St. Since then, our publication has grown to be a widely recognized journalism resource, quoted in corporate press releases, political advertising and best of all, linked to from major online resources like FoxNews, NBC, Harvard University, Discovery Channel and Forbes. TippNews has also duplicated itself to deal with the under-served news market of West Milton with MiltonNewsDAILY.com
A Recognized News Resource
While I had been following the Reynolds Journalism Institute on Twitter for some time, last month I received an invitation to come to their second annual Block by Block Community News Summit. I went online, completed the registration form and waited for an acknowledgement. Reynolds fellow, Michele McLellan got back in touch with me and let me know that the Institute would pickup airfare and accommodations for the event in exchange for my attendance as well as my participation in the event. 🙂 WOW! What a great opportunity!
The cross section of online community news publishers in attendance at this summit is very diverse with some of them finding funding through their supportive “paper” versions, others through the generosity of foundations and corporate sponsors, while still a majority subsist like TippNews DAILY on small banner advertisements provided by local businesses.
About the Event
Block by Block will be hosting this week its second annual Block by Block Community News Summit (#bxb11), an independent, online local news publishers gathering in Chicago, Sep. 29-Oct. 1. The event, sponsored by the Reynolds Journalism Institute, the Patterson Foundation, the Knight Foundation and Loyola University will bring together 200 of America’s online citizen journalism publishers.
What I want to get out of the Summit
Let me count the ways… First off, I want to learn how to better leverage the 86 contributors that have provided articles to TippNews over the past two years. How can we gain better engagement with them? Covering more stories with a wider and more diverse array of coverage? It is still awesome to have the news delivered to your inbox each day for free (from TippNews) however it is doubly awesome if every resident had a hand at writing and publishing it!
I get emails questions like this all the time. “How come you didn’t cover the XYZ event at the school the other day?” The answer so far has been made with a another question, “How come you didn’t take a photo and email THAT along with a story to editor@tippnews.com?” Readers appreciate “point of view” reporting in community news. If every story was written by yours truly, it would be bland, boring and predictable. There is nothing more precious than a story and photo submitted by a proud soccer mom who wrote a short story about her daughter learning the game of soccer. There is no way that my story could exceed the realism, spirit and pride of the story submitted by the parent and soccer mom.
I would also like to find out how other community news sites configure and deal with advertising opportunities. For those that don’t advertise on TippNews, I KNOW you are missing out. Advertising that my company Bash Foo offers “off site” to our clients receive on average between .1 and .2% Clicks Per View. TippNews banners however clock in with double that many clicks. They are also clicks from local residents, not out of town grazers of information. The advertising value of online community news sites like TippNews is very much under-rated. Hopefully I will learn how to better package, pitch and deliver these opportunities to our local businesses.
Covering the Summit
I’ll be covering the summit for TippNews in several ways.
First, there will be a live feed that is broadcast from the summit, I will be tweeting from my personal Twitter account http://twitter.com/delta40 and I’ll be live blogging here on TippNews when appropriate!
How can YOU Get Involved?
Easy. Email stories to editor@tippnews.com or follow the instructions on this site on how to become a contributor. As editor, I’ll proof your work for spelling/grammar and then launch your story onto the net where it can be read by everyone in our community. Your story also will be nationally syndicated to Google News, as we have a relationship with them. 🙂 How cool is that??
