Much of the news about start-up community news sites and their impact is anecdotal. While J-Lab collects a lot of those stories, yesterday we heard a refreshing tale of how nimble some new community media makers can be.
A shout out goes to Growthspur for its post on how seasoned journalist Bobbi Bowman took matters into her own hands and jumpstarted a way to publish breaking news.
From Growthspur:
Bowman learned that officials planned to close the public library in McLean, Va., for more than a year for renovations. No temporary site had been found. “Bowman knew that she couldn’t wait a few weeks to get her full-blown site up and running. She had a Big Story. So she went to Plan B — and demonstrated just how easy it is to get into the community news business.”
With help from J-Lab’s learning modules, Bowman got a crash course in WordPress and set up a quick blog using the name of her forthcoming site, The McLean Ear, to report the news. In the process, she had a chance to market her site and break more news when officials landed a new interim location.
The site just cost her time and energy. And when she’s ready for more, we have additional freebies here at the Knight Citizen News Network: http://kcnn.org/resources/the-freebies-list/
Have a similar start-up success story? We want to know.
Comments are closed.