Shotgun or Rifle Approach to an Independent Media Site?

I'm going to start referring to what I do as independent media, I think, rather than citizen journalism. Certainly I'll still be working with the citizens, teaching them the journalism trade, but I think what I'm doing at Muncie Free Press is more than a blog. (Nothing against blogs, but they're not a cure-all for what ails media.) I had someone in the press office of an Indiana politician refer to Muncie Free Press as a blog, and something they wanted to get into because it spoke to the people, the constituents. I explained (politely I hope!) that we were more than that.

In any case, before I get too far off track, what I want to talk about tonight is something Tom Grubisich, Mike Orren and others have been talking about - the difference between a shotgun approach to an independent media site (using lots of press releases to get breadth of coverage) and a rifle approach (narrow in on one or two niches and dig deep!)

One of the reasons I've made a decision to use the shotgun approach (for the moment) is that I can reach more people. If the 1% rule is correct (and I believe it pretty much is), you need a lot of members to get a small amount of active members. So, if I take the rifle approach to news, I may attract people who are interested in that niche, but the total number of people available is smaller.

You might be surprised to hear it from someone such as me, but a company *does need* profit (it's just making sure profit doesn't become the endgame.) To take Muncie Free Press (and her ideals) to the next level, I need to hire people. To do that, I need revenue. So, for now I settle with saving on expenses and overhead by not going out to cover topics with a rifle.

Instead, I blast the local community with a breadth of knowledge aggregated from various sources, sprinkled with a few citizens here and there so far. In doing this, I become part of the long tail, a place where I can compete with the likes of Gannett, even if they insist I don't exist.

No, this isn't perfect, but I have to think like a publisher - more citizens equal more content viewed (more ad revenue) and also our 1% of contributing members will be a larger number as our overall traffic increases. Almost two years into it, with no start-up capital at all, and money is starting to come in. (I'm having to supplement my income - and take time away from the site to do in-depth reporting - with freelance work, but I'm still able to run the site from the apartment, silently nurturing the community.

While we're on the topic of the shotgun approach and using press releases to plant seeds on the long tail to attract traffic - when I started (it is like a nicotine addiction, ya know...) I labeled where they came from on the very bottom of the site in italics I think. A month or so ago (when I started using them more) I stopped placing the notice on all of them. At least one visitor missed knowing the source of it, though, and I've brought them back.

What I'm trying to say is that I think it's important to be transparent about where the content is coming from - that's one thing big media doesn't routinely do. (I've seen lots of examples of this - and with Gannett's local "Get Published" starting-up, I see the newspaper using a lot more press releases, although they label them as such there.)

And speaking of The Star Press, I posted about them last night in my fifth "Notes from a Publisher" installment titled "One-Sided Conversations."

Whew. Lots more thoughts, but they're not coming out very coherent tonight. More tomorrow maybe. ;)

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