Center for Citizen Media

(This is the second in a series of postings about citizen media business issues. See the introduction here. All of these entries are considered to be in “beta” and will be revised and refined as they find a home on a more permanent area of the Center for Citizen Media web site. To that end, your comments, additional examples, and criticisms are welcome and will be invaluable contributions to this process.)

The recent rise of citizen journalism owes a lot to the lowering cost and rising accessibility of the internet and online technologies. We’re at the point where many citizen journalist websites are increasingly difficult to distinguish from mainstream media sites in terms of presentation and quality of content.

While it may be free and require little effort to create a Blogger account and editorialize about topics that interest you, developing and maintaining a citizen journalism site like OhMyNews, SlashDot, Gotham Gazette, or H2o Town takes significant resources (whether it be money, time, or people). The question then becomes how to either make money or at least recoup the costs you incur.

There are several sources of revenue and business models available. While the best option for you may be the ubiquitous Google AdSense bar of text advertisements, there are many other options to be considered that may better suit your site and your readers. Maybe, for instance, you’d prefer to link your readers to Amazon, where they can pick up that spectacular documentary you were raving about or maybe your style is more conducive to offering cutely-branded t-shirts.

Before you decide on a particular model, take some time to consider what effects and implications each will bring. While a more detailed review and comparison will come after the individual discussions, there appear to be a few common factors to keep in mind. These core ethical and/or strategic themes will probably come as no surprise:

Trust – Long-term success depends on the trust of your readers, which doesn’t only relate to factual accuracy, honesty, and reliability. If your readers love your content but feel tricked, annoyed, or put off in some way by blatant money-making attempts, they might think twice about returning. Beyond simply getting people to return, trust also breeds referrals and links and therefore exponentially-increasing traffic. Trust is paramount.

Value – The best kind of revenue model is one that adds value to the reader’s experience. It provides an avenue for more information, a convenient link to buy something relevant, or perhaps a welcome deal on a product or service that the reader has interest in.

Creativity – Nobody wants to feel like a target market or a potential ad click. Anybody who has used the web to some extent knows how we subconsciously tune out certain types of marketing. Numerous studies have been done on optimizing advertisement space in terms of where people are most likely to look or click, but there’s something to be said for less-scientific creativity.

(Ryan McGrady is a new media graduate student at Emerson College where he is studying knowledge, identity, and ideas in the information age.)

My frequent travels expose me to a common problem: high-cost Internet access away from home. This is not a serious issue in the U.S., where I have a T-Mobile hotspot account and find no-extra-charge Wi-Fi connections in many hotels and other venues.

Outside the U.S., this is not how it tends to work. Outrageously so, in many cases.

I’ve arrived in Ekaterinburg, Russia, a city in the Urals region, on a visit sponsored by the U.S. State Department to visit universities and media organizations here and in the nearby city of Chelyabinsk. My hotel is superb in almost every way, with the one exception you’ll have guessed by now.

The rooms have wireless access, but it costs about US $40 for six hours. At least this is not six hours from the time of first sign-on, but rather for a total of that time logged into the system.

Fortunately, and this is something I often find in such situations, there is a well-equipped business office where I’ve plugged my computer into the hotel’s network. Here I’m getting access at (still not sure yet) either at no cost or a fraction of the in-room charge.

Net access charges abroad are almost as annoying as the ridiculous mobile phone roaming charges. But for those of us who travel for business, the alternative is to be out of touch. Which is no alternative at all — as hotels fully understand.

UPDATED

SF Chronicle: Bloggers in Burma keep world informed during military crackdown.

Dodging a deadly military crackdown that has killed at least nine protesters, Burmese bloggers are on the front lines, providing news and photos of death and insurrection.

It’s more than bloggers, of course, but let’s go ahead and use that word as a proxy for what’s happening — the explosion of edge-in media and its use to get the word out about vital events.

Today, Burma’s junta appears to have cut off Internet access as part of its brutal crackdown. This will work, briefly, but is the government willing to shut down all communications indefinitely, including mobile phones?

The questions of reliability and trust will be paramount in what’s coming out of Burma, Net or no Net. We are distinctly inclined to trust what we see from on-the-ground observers in cases such as this, where the regime is so odious that it’s tempting to believe it would commit any atrocity to preserve its power. We need to exercise some caution, and we need to sort out the reliable observers from the ones who will certainly use turmoil to push specific agendas. (Note: I am not pointing at anything in this case, just observing that it’s something to watch for.)

I recently hosted journalists from developing nations at a Berkeley workshop. I told them — some who live and work in places where it’s physically dangerous, not just economically difficult, to be journalists — that they humble the rest of us. (As noted in coments, by the way, one of the dead in Burma is a professional photographer, apparently gunned down in cold blood.) I feel the same for the brave people who are telling us today what a corrupt and brutal government is doing halfway around the world.

We frequently speak of pivotal events in the citizen media world. I suspect this may be one of them.

UPDATE: I discussed all this on Friday night’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Here’s a Real Audio link and a link to a downloadable MP3 file.

I’m heading to Chicago tomorrow and then to Russia for 10 days for sessions with journalists there. My own blogging will be somewhat limited during this period, but the site will be featuring Ryan McGrady’s continuing series on business issues in citizen media.

UPDATED

NY Times: Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Rights Messages.

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

But the company reversed course this morning, saying it had made a mistake.

“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.

If this doesn’t sound the alarm in a serious way, free speech in America is in clear and present danger. We communicate increasingly via digital networks of various kinds, and Verizon’s position that it can decide what kinds of speech get through is beyond scary: It’s downright dangerous.

Verizon is now claiming that its policy is designed to prevent unwanted messages — when this was nothing of the sort. People had to sign up. The deception is transparent.

There are just a few major telecom carriers left. We cannot allow them to decide what we can talk about on these networks.

(This is the first in a series of postings about citizen media business issues. See the introduction here. All of these entries are considered to be in “beta” and will be revised and refined as they find a home on a more permanent area of the Center for Citizen Media web site.   To that end, your comments, additional examples, and criticisms are welcome and will be invaluable contributions to this process.)

Below is our working outline, with proposed sections and sub-sections that explain how we now see these topics fitting together.

In each case, we’ll provide a thorough description of the topic along with several examples (with links); pros and cons where relevant; ethical concerns; and some ideas about best practices.

Again, if something strikes you as missing from this outline—a topic or sub-topic that should be covered alongside what is listed—please let us know. You can post a comment or send us a note via email or this form.

I. Possible Business Models for Citizen Journalists

• Overview
• Business Models
  • Affiliate Programs
  • Memberships/Subscriptions
  • Blogs for Branding, Promotion, and Support
  • Merchandise
  • Donations
  • Ad Space
• Review/Comparison
• Nonprofits and Tax Issues

II. Creating a Website

• Getting Your Voice Out
• Registering a Domain Name
• Finding a Web Host
• Blog-Hosting Sites
• Development
• Web Statistics
• Traffic Rankings, Search Engines, and Search Engine Optimization
• Website Optimization

Our detailed postings will begin in several days. Again, we look forward to your suggestions via comments, email or this form.

(Ryan McGrady is a new media graduate student at Emerson College where he is studying knowledge, identity, and ideas in the information age.)

Good news: We’re about to launch a first in a series of postings about citizen media as a business. Specifically, we’ll be exploring possible business models for citizen journalism and the processes surrounding the creation of a website.

The principal researcher and writer for this project is Ryan McGrady, a new media graduate student at Emerson College where he is studying knowledge, identity, and ideas in the information age. (See more about Ryan here.)

These postings will become elements of a comprehensive on-line guide. Needless to say, it’s an ambitious project.

Because of that, we’ll post these pieces with the initial understanding that they are works in progress—beta versions—of what will continue to evolve and improve. We hope you’ll join in a conversation about these topics, and help us make the guide better.

Which means we’d love to hear from all of you who read, write, publish, analyze, discuss, create, record, or otherwise produce or consume media. Your feedback, additions, corrections, and questions are welcome as invaluable perspectives on these broad, evolving areas. If you want to join in, please post a comment or send us a note via email or this form.

(Note: This project evolved from a collaboration with the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a project funded via the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge. Also supporting this work is a grant from the McClatchy Co.)

You can do your part at EarmarkWatch.org: Bringing Citizen Oversight to Congressional Spending:

Here’s your chance to investigate earmarks–those spending measures inserted by members of Congress into bills that direct taxpayer dollars to their pet projects. Are members using earmarks to meet pressing needs? Reward political supporters? Are they good public policy, or vehicles for pure pork? Every earmark is different, and we currently have over 3,000 of them online, ready and waiting for you to dig into.

What we all uncover could play a role in next year’s elections — or it should. Spread the word.

Clark Hoyt (NY Times Public Editor): Betraying Its Own Best Interests.

I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to.

So, the paper may well have cut MoveOn a special deal (though if you read Hoyt’s piece there’s still some confusion about this). And whether the juvenile “Betray Us” language was a violation of other Times policies is less important than the fact that the paper misled people for a week about what had actually happened.

One notable lapse, in addition: When I looked at the Times home page today I didn’t find any reference to Hoyt’s piece. It should have been flagged on the home page, because this is a case where transparency would best be more prominent. A small, unchanging link to the public-editor page is insufficient.

(Note: I own a small amount of NY Times Co. stock.)

I’m giving a public talk on Tuesday at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. That’s in Tempe, just outside of Phoenix.