Project Title:LocalOnlineNews.TV
Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:$375,000
Expected amount of time to complete project:1
Total cost of project including all sources of funding:$450,000
Describe your project:LocalOnlineNews.TV is a hyperlocal video news content provider currently operating as a start-up in West Hartford, Connecticut. Professional broadcast journalists produce, shoot, and edit video packages covering local news and sports in a single suburban community. Our video content is made available to bloggers, hyperlocal aggregators, commercial media and others to use on their own sites free of charge.
This open distribution model is already proving successful with over 40,000 video plays on our West Hartford content since our late April, 2009 launch. Slightly more than 30% of those views came from other blogs, social media sites, and news organizations.
We are building LocalOnlineNews.TV to be a sustainable business through the sale of exclusive advertising. We sell one ad per story, which consists of a five second pre-roll followed by a post-roll of up to five minutes. Our goal is to build a professional news organization that can fairly compensate the journalists who work for us.
If awarded a News Challenge grant, the funds will give LocalOnlineNews.TV the opportunity to greatly improve our current coverage and expand into neighboring communities in the Greater Hartford area. We project, based on our initial success, that adding those communities will provide us with a viewership comparable to that of a local radio station.
Those numbers will provide a sustainable base in which to grow the operation into a profitable news business that brings value (and shared revenue) to other independent and commercial hyperlocal news organizations in the areas we cover.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?We believe that professionally produced content in small to medium sized communities doesn't have to be limited to just text and photos.
Many residents rarely see or hear their local officials and community leaders. LocalOnlineNews.TV allows residents to put a face and voice to the names they may have only just read about until now. In addition to our 2 minute packages we also post the full raw footage from many of the interviews we conduct with local newsmakers.
Because our content is distributed in such a dynamic and flexible way, it can be easily aggregated by just about any service our viewers may already be using to get their news.
How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists)LocalOnlineNews.TV is the first news organization to create and deliver professionally produced online video news content covering individual communities.
Unlike other news organizations, we’re not looking to create another 'destination.' We believe that all news content will be aggregated in a way that fits individual viewer preferences, so we encourage new and old media alike to aggregate our content. We utilize open standards to ensure our packages will be accessible to emerging aggregation technologies.
We know that any solution to resurrect and reinvigorate local news is going to span multiple forms of media. There will always be room for audio, video, and text content from multiple sources.
What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?We already operate in West Hartford, CT and in a group of small towns along the Connecticut River.
Our co-founders have a proven track record in journalism, business, online publishing, and grassroots organizing:
Lon Seidman gained extensive business experience helping to run his family’s business, The Safety Zone LLC. He has also managed numerous successful political campaigns at all levels of government in part by leveraging many free, low cost, and open source technologies. He has tremendous virtual- and physical-world grassroots organizing experience - skills that were put to the test when he managed a major 2006 Congressional campaign that resulted in an 83 vote victory out of more than 240,000 votes cast.
Anna Sava is an Emmy Award winning Connecticut television journalist. She most recently was the Consumer Investigative Reporter and Morning Anchor for New Haven, CT-based WTNH-TV. The Better Business Bureau awarded her its Consumer Education Award for her work on consumer issues. Anna works directly with our reporters in the production of their packages to ensure a hyperlocal focus.
Steven Kapsinow is an Internet industry veteran with over ten years of online publishing experience. Steven has served in various editorial, community development, and product management roles for leading online trade publications. Having survived a number of Internet bubbles, Steve has seen first hand what works and what doesn't.
Related Proposal:None
