How to Start a Media Organisation by Starting a Community

In this guide, you will learn how to launch a new local media outlet using the “community-building first” approach.

When journalists launch a new local media outlet, they tend to think too big. What should the website look like? What sections do we need? And what should we call ourselves? These are all important questions—but for later. At the beginning, something else is much more crucial: building a community. In this guide, you'll learn how to set up a simple local newsletter publication by starting with community building.

If you are unsure what exactly is meant by community, please first read the article How we define Community Journalism.

If you want to work in a community-centered way, you can set the course for this right from the start. Really, right at the very beginning. Building relationships with your potential audience, your potential community, can be the first step toward a new local media outlet. Especially for journalists who learned their craft in publishing structures and large media companies, this may sound unusual at first, if not downright intimidating. We don't find our audience by producing content. We first find our community and then work with them to create content.

Start with a local newsletter

Newsletters have long since evolved from a pure marketing tool to an independent journalistic product in journalism. At Bürgerportal Bergisch Gladbach, the morning newsletter is the most important product, with around 16,000 readers every day. At Tsüri.ch and Bajour, too, the daily, free “briefing” is a central component of the strategy to attract new paying members. Viernull sends its “story of the day” to its (paying) community every morning, where opening the newsletter has long been part of the morning routine. And RUMS was even founded as a pure newsletter medium, sending out their newsletter, the RUMS-Brief, three times a week.

The good thing about the newsletter approach is that anyone can get started. The barriers to entry are extremely low. Building on the newsletter, the offering can continue to grow over time.

Five steps to your local media?

Hardly. The topic is too complex for that. Five steps are not enough. We have to be honest about that at this point.

In this guide, we deliberately omit the topic of “starting a business,” i.e., the actual process of founding a company. Others can explain this much better. In the Collections section, you will find an overview of good guides and helpful resources on this topic. We also do not describe how you can earn money with your new offering here. However, at the end, you will find an overview of further guides that shed light on these topics.

Our aim here is to explain how the principle of “community building first” works. We have identified five steps for this:

1

From plan to launch in no time

2

Build relationships (with the right people)

3

Go out onto the street (and among people)

4

Your first community event

5

The next stage

1. From plan to launch in no time

The fundamental idea behind our method is to engage with people as quickly as possible. Therefore, you do not need to wait long or plan too much in advance. The point is that your new project should be developed in dialogue with your community.

Let us be honest: you probably already have a more or less concrete idea in mind of what your new local information service should look like. That is perfectly acceptable. Keep that idea in mind. However, we would like to encourage you to approach the matter with an open mind from now on. It's like journalistic research, where you start with a thesis but still conduct your research with an open mind and may eventually have to accept that you need to adjust your thesis or even discard it completely.

Plan a 'listening tour'

Steps 2 and 3 are about engaging with as many people as possible, but also with the right people, in order to lay the foundation for your community. To approach this systematically, you can do some preparation.

First, consider: Where and when can I reach a lot of people?

To do this, make a list of places where you think your potential community might meet. This could be the weekly market, a café, a library, a supermarket, or anything else.

Make a list of specific places you want to visit in order to systematically listen to people there. (The Listening Post Collective in the US even recommends creating a map of your surroundings with these locations. You can do this with Google Maps, for example.)

It may also be helpful to create a second list of events in the coming weeks and months that you could join.

This preparation will help you later on, because you won't have to constantly think about where you want to go.

Make decisions for your tool stack

Since you will primarily be focused on building a community at the beginning, you will need a tool stack that is suitable for this purpose.

'Toolstack' refers to all the tools you use for your work. This usually means the software and digital services you use.

First, you should choose a newsletter tool. There are many available, all of which can do more or less the same thing. We would recommend Ghost. It is a newsletter and publishing tool that is specifically tailored to the needs of small, independent media outlets.

With Ghost, you can not only send newsletters with ease, but also build a simple, visually appealing landing page. That's all you need to get started. You don't have to worry about who can set up a WordPress site with CMS for you or spend thousands of dollars on it. At the same time, Ghost offers enough flexibility to expand and grow your medium later on.

It can also be helpful to start directly with a CRM. Customer relationship management helps you manage your entire community.

CRM = Customer Relationship Management

Unlike a content management system (CMS), CRM is not about content, but rather about managing contact data. Ideally, CRM is the central location where you can find your entire community. There, you can see who has subscribed to your newsletter, who has paid for your offer, who has registered for which events, and who has purchased which items in your shop.

CRM systems can be highly complex, difficult to implement and operate, and expensive because they are primarily designed for large companies that use them to maintain their customer databases.

That's why we at CORRECTIV have developed beabee, our own community tool specifically for small, independent local media outlets. It combines CRM functions, community engagement, and a payment system that will help you monetize your community later on.

You can find more information about beabee at beabee.io

Using a CRM may seem like overkill at first. However, it is worth setting up your community database professionally right from the start. If in doubt, you can also start with a well-organized Excel list, which you can then use to move on to step 2.

2. Build relationships (with the right people)

In every community, there are people who stand out more than others — often because they hold a prominent position, such as an official role, or because they are particularly active in society. In political theory, these individuals are referred to as opinion leaders; in traditional marketing, they’re called multipliers; and on social media, they’re known as influencers.

In communities, membership of this group can be very individual. It can include the chairpersons of associations or local initiatives, committed local politicians, local businesspeople such as café owners, pub landlords, booksellers, but also artists or 'neighborhood caretakers', i.e., people who are more socially active than others. Identifying these people is your first task.

Start with your community database

Make a list of all the names you can think of. This can be a simple table in which you enter the name, the person's role (i.e., the reason why they are on the list), and their contact details. To keep track of things, you should also create two columns in which you note whether you have already contacted the person and whether you have already spoken to them.

Have conversations

Conversations with opinion leaders essentially focus on two things:

1. Find out something about the information needs of the community for and with which you want to do journalism.

2. Build an initial network, inspire others with your ideas, and lay the foundation for potential collaborations.

Good contacts with opinion leaders and multipliers can help you later on, for example with your first fundraising or membership campaign, but also with practical challenges: perhaps a local marketing agency will help you develop a logo or your first website pro bono, or you can organize your first small community events in a bar.

The conversations can always follow a similar pattern. Tell them that you want to establish a new local media outlet that also promotes participation and social engagement, and explain where you are at the moment and what your conversation is about. Then, above all, you should ask lots of questions. Try to find out how your conversation partner assesses the current flow of information in the community and what they consider to be the most pressing issues.

Building relationships and networking isn't everyone's cup of tea. To make it easier to get started, you can begin with people you already know well. This will help you feel more confident. It's also helpful to develop a conversation guide that you can take with you to every meeting. Here is a list of sample questions:

Questions for discussions with opinion leaders in the community

• What information needs do you see in the community?

• In your opinion, which topics are not covered enough?

• What do you like about the reporting of the established media in our country?

• What don't you like?

• What do people talk about when they come to your store?

• How could you support me?

• Would you help with a campaign to raise awareness of the project?

• Who else should I definitely talk to?

At the end of the conversation, you should definitely ask whether, and if so, how, they can and want to get involved. Perhaps you also have specific ideas that your conversation partner could help you with. You should also explain what your next steps are and ask if you can keep your conversation partner informed by email. This way, these contacts can become the first members of your email distribution list, i.e., the first readers of your new local media outlet. Congratulations!

Document conversations

After you have had a conversation, you should document the most important insights. This can be a simple document in which you transfer your notes or simply another column in your contact list. If you start directly with a CRM: Most offer the option of adding notes to a contact or tagging contacts accordingly. It is particularly important to note whether you are allowed to contact the conversation partners by email.

3. Get out on the street (and among people)

You can also start this step at the same time as step 2. The headline is meant literally: go where people are and get in touch with them there.

If you created a map (or a list of places) in step 1, you can start with that: think about where you want to start. Perhaps you can set up a small stand at your town's weekly market, set up a bar table at an event, or sit at the exit of a supermarket or in the middle of the pedestrian zone on Saturday? You can also reserve a regulars' table in a pub or ask the operators of a café for a table on the terrace. This is where your creativity and experience come into play.

Ideally, you should be able to create a permanent location right from the start that will become a meeting place for your community. For example, CORRECTIV founder David Schraven's Marktviertel Bottrop started with a small coffee cart at the weekly market in the german town of Bottrop. This, in turn, was created in cooperation with business people and restaurateurs around the market square. Perhaps your conversations in step 2 have already opened up opportunities for such cooperation? Or are there regular events that you can link up with, such as a weekly or after-work market?

The coffee cart of Marktviertel Bottrop at the Bottrop weekly market. Source: Marktviertel Bottrop

Strike up conversations

The next step is to think about how you can strike up conversations with people. Perhaps you could put up a sign that says, “What issues in our city concern you? Tell me about them!” and offer coffee and croissants for free or for a small fee.

This is what your booth could look like: CORRECTIV reporter Anna Kassin at the opening of Publix in Berlin. The sign says: "What concerns you about our society? Tell CORRECTIV."

Once you know how to attract attention, you should think about what you want to talk to people about. Start by developing a short questionnaire. Ask questions about how people get their information, which topics are particularly important to them, and what they feel is lacking in other local reporting. We have created a sample questionnaire that you can use as is or adapt to your needs:

Example questionnaire

1. How do you usually find out about what is happening in your neighborhood? (Select the three most common sources) (Multiple choice) ( ) Radio, ( ) Television, ( ) Local newspaper (print), ( ) Local newspaper (website), ( ) Social media or messenger services, ( ) Friends and family, ( ) Local organizations/initiatives/associations, ( ) Local multipliers/community leaders, ( ) Church or religious community, ( ) Official channels (e.g., city administration), ( ) Other, namely:

1. Can you specify your answers in more detail? (Free text field)

2. Which of these topics are most important to you personally here in our community? (Select three) (Multiple choice) ( ) Health, ( ) Housing, ( ) Education, ( ) Work/jobs, ( ) Environment/climate, ( ) Safety, ( ) Cultural diversity & language, ( ) Culture & events, ( ) Support for children & young people, ( ) Migration & integration, ( ) Other:

3. Is there a specific topic that you feel is not covered enough or is poorly covered in the local media? (Free text field)

4. We would like to establish a new local media outlet for XXX. Therefore, we would like to stay in touch with you and keep you informed about the progress of our project. May we contact you by email? ( ) Yes, please keep me informed by email. ( ) No, I do not wish to receive emails.

5. My email address: (Free text field)

Here you will find the survey above as a template for beabee (in German):

Go to the beabee template

Are you a beabee user and want to use the template? Simply contact [email protected]

Once you have created your questionnaire, think about how you will use it. If you have set up a small stand somewhere, it is best to fill out the questionnaire while talking to people. Simply ask your conversation partner the questions from the questionnaire and fill it out on your laptop or tablet. To survey more people at the same time, you can also print out a QR code with a link to the questionnaire and display it at your stand. The Listening Post Collective from the USA recommends printing postcards or small slips of paper with the questionnaire. If you have a stand at an event, you can distribute these in advance on the tables or chairs and set up a box for the completed postcards at your stand or at the exit.

Your conversations and the questionnaire have two goals:

1. Find out what issues people care about and how they get their information.

2. Collect email addresses.

As mentioned above, email addresses are your most important currency. But that doesn't mean that the questionnaire and your conversations are just a means to an end. Quite the contrary. You should really focus on what the most pressing issues are for your community. Ideally, you can even identify an initial topic right at the beginning that you can use to start your reporting or that can serve as a hook for your kick-off event.

Start a newsletter

While you're building your community through conversations and collecting email addresses, you can already start your newsletter. It can be pretty basic at first. For example, you can share once a week what's new with your project, where you'll be setting up your booth again on the weekend, and what you're learning from your conversations. Of course, you can also pick up on initial topics that people have told you about in your conversations, research them, and publish your findings. This depends not least on your capacity.

Sending a newsletter to just a handful of people at the beginning may feel strange, but it's important: after all, your main goal is to build a community. This only works if you stay in touch with people from the very beginning. If you wait weeks or even months until you have enough contacts, the first ones will no longer remember you. As a rule of thumb, you can remember that you should send someone your first email no later than one to two weeks after they have given you their email address.

Online questionnaire

We believe that being physically present on site is essential to the success of this whole approach. However, that doesn't mean you can't also be active online with your questionnaire and newsletter sign-up. For example, you can ask the opinion leaders from step 2 to share the questionnaire within their network or on social media. At the same time, you can ask your community in your newsletter to tell others about it and forward the questionnaire. We would always advise you to focus most of your energy on face-to-face encounters, but this is still an opportunity to reach out to and activate other circles.

Don't stop listening

It's hard to say when the right time is to move on to step 4. Every community is different. That's why we can't give you an exact benchmark, such as a specific number of newsletter subscribers, at which point it's worth holding your first community event. The important thing is to get a feel for when the time is right.

But even more important than that is this: you should never stop at step 3. Staying in touch with the community, giving them the chance to have their say, and involving them again and again, whether in research or organizational matters, is one of the basic principles of community journalism. Your future planning should be based on this. A practical example: If you are looking for editorial offices at some point, you should also ask yourself how accessible you will be to your community there.

Many community-centered media outlets have their editorial offices in public places. The Bürgerportal Bergisch Gladbach operates a co-working space where the editorial team also works. RUMS has rented a shop with display windows in downtown Münster. Mensagem from Lisbon operates out of a cultural café. You can read more about this soon in our guide “The Editorial Office as a Public Place.”

4. Organize your first event

If you feel ready, you should consider organizing your first event for your community. Since this approach focuses on building a community first, it is important that you create spaces for your community to interact from the very beginning. For many community-centered organizations, events are rightly the most important element of their community engagement strategy.

As mentioned at the end of step 3, the right time for this varies greatly. Try to get a feel for whether you can already mobilize your community for an event or not. This, in turn, depends heavily on the theme of the event.

First, you should decide: Should your event revolve around a topic that is important to the community? Or would you rather bring people together to discuss your new local media outlet and have them participate in the decision-making process right from the start?

There are good reasons for and against both options. If there is already an issue that particularly concerns and mobilizes many people in your community, it may make sense to organize an event on this topic. For example, if many people in your community tell you that they are concerned about the future of the city center, you could organize a Barcamp on the future of the city center where your community can discuss positive visions together.

On the contrary, thematic events tend to be rather time-consuming. A barcamp, a “lower house debate,” (both in German) and even a simple panel discussion can quickly turn into a lot of work, especially if you don't have a team to help you.

On the other hand, you also have control over how complex your event will be. For our example topic, “The future of the city center,” you could simply reserve a large table at your favorite café and invite people to an open discussion. Or, instead of sitting at a table, you could take a walk through the city together, during which your community can discuss the topic among themselves or with representatives of the city administration.

Another advantage of a themed event is that you can report on it afterwards. At the very least, you can describe what was particularly important to people in your next newsletter. This, in turn, will provide you with ideas for further research. Perhaps experts or sources will attend your event who can help you with your later research on the topic.

The other option is to make your new local media outlet the topic of your first community event. You can invite people to such an event with a simple question: What do you expect from local journalism? At such an event, you can present your ideas, get feedback, and talk about what participants would like to see from a new local media outlet.

With this type of event, how you phrase the invitation is very important. Most people have never discussed (local) journalism on a meta level before. That's why you should make sure to keep the invitation accessible and explain why their perspective is important to you and how they can contribute to the discussion.

Above all, it is important to get people involved and let them have their say. An event like this can also be a good way to build a small team of supporters. Perhaps there will be interested people who want to support you.

You will soon find ideas for methods for your community events in a separate guide. If you have any suggestions, please contact us at [email protected].

Continue collecting email addresses on site

It is highly likely that many of the participants have already subscribed to your newsletter. If you are not working with registrations, you should definitely pass around a participant list on site where people can sign up and confirm that they want to receive updates about the event, i.e., your newsletter. You can also display QR codes that participants can use to sign up for your newsletter themselves.

Report on how your event went

No matter what type of event you organize, report on it to your community in your newsletter afterwards. Share a few photos with your subscribers, but above all, summarize the discussion and the results. Above all, explain what will happen with the results. Don't make any false promises. Be open about what may have gone wrong or why you think the event was not a success, if that is the case.

Use all your contacts for preparation and invitations

By now, in step 4, you will realize how good your preparatory work has been so far. In step 2, you established contacts with opinion leaders and community leaders. These can now be helpful in planning your first event.

• Do you need a venue? -> Perhaps one of your contacts runs a café or can arrange another venue for you.

• Do you need technology? -> Maybe someone will lend you theirs pro bono or sponsor you.

• Do you want to spread the invitations more widely? -> Ask all your opinion leaders to send the invitation via their mailing list or to publicize it.

Now, in step 4, you will realize what an advantage it can be to build a community database right from the start. If you have maintained your contact list well and also entered the notes from your conversations in step 2, you will probably be able to see at a glance who can and wants to help you with what.

Please also ask your existing small community to spread the invitation more widely. Ask opinion leaders and multipliers to share your invitation within their network. You can also ask them what they need to best promote your event. To make it easier for everyone, you can prepare a short invitation text and graphics that people can use. This way, anyone can share it in a few minutes via email, messenger, or social media without having to think too much about it.

Know your limits

Even if you get help from your community, organizing an event is always more work than you think. You shouldn't take on too much for your first event. Start small, especially if you're on your own. It's better to do what you can deliver well than to plan too big: for example, if you're thinking of a format that only works if at least 100 people attend, you need to be sure that at least that many will show up.

It may be that people don't necessarily flock to your first event. This may be disappointing at first, but it's also quite normal. Community building is a long process, and one event is not enough. Think of it this way: three smaller events with fewer people, where you can build close relationships, are more sustainable than one huge event that you can't follow up on due to a lack of resources and can't fulfill the expectations you've raised.

5. Plan the next steps

Let's take stock: In the first step, you made the necessary preparations, mapped your community, and identified community leaders. In the second step, you conducted interviews with community leaders and, in the best case scenario, brought your first partners on board. In the third step, you went on a listening tour, talked to at least dozens of people about their topics and expectations, and collected a number of email addresses to build a mailing list. You have even started publishing, writing a newsletter every week or every two weeks, perhaps already researching topics that are important to your community and publishing your first stories on them. Then you went one step further and organized a kick-off event to bring your community together.

Now it's time to plan the next steps. You have a lot to think about:

• How do you build a team?

• How can you and do you want to earn money?

• What kind of business do you want to start?

• How can you continue to grow?

• How do you want to structure the content of your newsletter?