Blogically Thinking

Observations and Learnings from J-Lab's Jan Schaffer

Free and Easy

Posted by Jan Schaffer

Monday, March 08, 2010

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://www.kcnn.org/modules/the_freebies_list/

Have a similar start-up success story? We want to know.

Published on 03/08 at 04:00 PM

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