Local Digital Social Networks
Preference for small, comprehensible businesses; valuing craftsmanship, limits, anti-optimization, and the philosophy of “enough.”
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I feel like they're more real. I like real things, for whatever that means. Define it however you'd like. But a billion-dollar business or a ten-billion-dollar business, just it doesn't feel like a real thing to me. It feels like a concept.
Meanwhile, the dry cleaner down the street, I can drop off my shirt. I get it cleaned. I bring it up. I pick
... See moreShe and others wanted to find a way to restore their sense of community. They wanted to weave and the question was, how? “We chose activities that we knew people really cared about, but where there was no controversy,” she says.
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To say that Americans pay for civic participation and not news is to say that they care about paying for membership in a community, not digital content.
Yoni Greenbaum • The Hyperlocal Economics Nobody Wants to Admit
Hyperlocal is the only model. Between yesterday’s Pew Research survey data and last week’s newsroom revenue analysis from Justin Bank, journalism funders and support organizations have two sets of data they can no longer ignore. Together, they expose the fallacy of national and metro-centric economics and confirm what funders have long suspected:... See more
The Hyperlocal Economics Nobody Wants to Admit
I am moving away from the “grant for life” model. This $330k seed investment acts as the bridge to self-sustainability. The grant covers the first 12 months of professional salaries and the total front-loaded cost of the “Coordination Layer.” By Month 13, our target 20% conversion rate should generate the monthly recurring revenue required to carry... See more
Yoni Greenbaum • The Sebastopol Protocol: A New Local News Stress Test
This isn’t groundbreaking. Organizations like CoastAlaska, the Tiny News Collective, and Indiegraf have proven pieces of this. But all of them are missing the shared secret sauce I believe can elevate all hyperlocal newsrooms at once: professional employment and a PEO within a geographic cluster.
Yoni Greenbaum • The Sebastopol Protocol: A New Local News Stress Test
Local journalism shouldn’t just close gaps. It should help residents understand how to show up better at public meetings. When people know the backstory, civic participation closes the loop.
Yoni Greenbaum • The Sebastopol Protocol: A New Local News Stress Test
But let’s go one step further than drawing charts. If we believe that extreme proximity is the ONLY financially viable direction forward—and let’s be clear, that conversion rate demands it—we have to change how we treat hyperlocal newsrooms. We need to stop treating them like “passion projects” operated by burnt-out freelancers. We need to start... See more
The Sebastopol Protocol: A New Local News Stress Test
The U.S. contains multitudes, and our regional differences are vast, and most people live fulfilling lives, without a lot of cinematic drama, but with a lot of quiet dignity, in the town where they were born.