It's beginning. Soon coming to a Midwest town near you. The generals in the Gannett camp might not know it yet, but surely they will after posting this. The revolution will be blogged, though, for the benefit of the people - those headed even now to the front lines.

So many thoughts as I sit here, typing, thinking, waiting, doing. The sales rep. working with me presented to 50 local business people today. At least three bites so far. Not to mention the three or four leads I have, with people coming to me.

The current MFP is me and a handful of people, but as revenue starts to come in, and traffic grows, what we can achieve increases.

The role of the Grassroots Publisher is to fine tune (like a laser beam) the power of the people collected around their websites. The Gatekeeper is still needed. For these first two years I've managed to populate the site pretty well on my own, but it's not something that scales well at all.

MFP with more paid staff and more volunteers will be even more formidable, though. I know the battle is going to get nasty if we start to take baby size bites out of their local (giant-sized) slice of ad revenue. (And by their, I mean Rutter and all the others too...)

The prototype public newsroom in Elwood is going well. Al Jordan and I don't have regular hours there yet, but still have people stopping by to learn about the sites and what we're doing. His site is growing and more and more people are using the site and talking about the site.

The local sales blitz is the big news, though, because revenue is important if you want to grow. After two years, I'm tired. I want to hire help. I know who I want and what I need.

It's time to expand.

To Gannett et al, "Nuts!"

TSP-ad-example Large

MFP Ad Example

Note: the ad on MFP is an example only, not a current advertiser. And the screenshot of The Star Press is used for educational purposes.

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