Managing

1

• Managing
• Community Participation
• Mary Lou Fulton
• Founder, The Northwest Voice
• VP Audience Development, The Bakersfield
  Californian

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Participation is hot!

• Newspapers have caught blog fever
• Lots of innovation going on in citizen
  journalism
• -- Backfence.com
• BlufftonToday.com
• NewWest.net
• YourHub.com

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Even The New Yorker!
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Too much, too fast?

• Its great to see so much enthusiasm for
  participation
• However, many underestimate what it takes.
  Offering tools on a web site is not enough.
• Successful participation requires structure and
  ongoing management -- Im concerned that a
  powerful idea wont take root because of our
  industrys inexperience and impatience.

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Making it Work

• Know your community Know who youre doing this
  for and who you think will participate.
• Give them something to hold on to Provide
  topics and ideas.
• Keep it simple Make it fast and easy, with
  simple rules.
• Make contributors the stars How will they get
  to show off? What will they get out of it?
• Be an active community leader Keep shaking the
  trees and tending the garden.

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Know Your Community

• Planning started in October 2003. Original
  request was to look into starting a community
  newspaper in the Northwest.
• Market research showed 85 of homes were
  owner-occupied and 33 of residents were under
  18.

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Creating Structure

• Our target community homeowners with kids in the
  K-12 schools
• We structures participation around topics of
  interest to them
• Geographical schools, churches, youth sports,
  events, neighborhood news
• Topical outdoor recreation, education, horses,
  cars.
• We created a prototype (print and web), made a
  list of likely contributors and met with as many
  of them in person as we could.

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Creating Structure

• Having predictable content streams makes it
  easier.
• Columnists provide about 20 to 30 of the
  content
• Editor writes 10 to 15 of content.
• The rest of the content comes in from community
  contributors

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Keep it Simple

• Rules are simple if its local and legal, we
  publish it. All of it.
• Its easy to submit stuff -- just fill in the
  boxes on a Web page.
• We edit content for grammar and style.
• Continually suggest ideas for easy ways to
  participate -- photo contests work very well.

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Contributors as Stars

• All of our contributors are volunteers.
• Every contributor gets an e-mail response that
  can be forwarded to friends and family.
• Print edition is a huge motivator, since it is
  delivered free to every home in the area.
• Positive feedback from neighbors and loved ones
  creates lots of goodwill and turns contributors
  into evangelists for The Voice.

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Community Management

• In the beginning, our editor had to bug people
  every day to submit content.
• Now we have plenty of submissions and she bugs
  people to keep a good mix (We havent heard from
  your school in a while..)
• Community management is ongoing and essential to
  sustaining participation.

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Lessons Learned

• Participation works! But it takes thought,
  structure and effort to make it happen.
• The print edition is a big part of our success
  for content, marketing and revenue (the
  refrigerator factor)
• You need staffers who are open to a new kind of
  journalism. Three of our four staff not from
  newspaper business.
• \

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Lessons Learned

• Regular contributors/columnists will come and go.
  Thats just a fact of life when youre working
  with volunteers.
• The quality of the content is much better than we
  thought. And people like to be edited!
• The Voice has paved the way for more reader
  participation in our daily paper and other
  products in the company.