Note on 501(c) 3 status or other non-traditional business structure: The Next Newsroom is a business. However, the Community Stock Option framework may well incorporate a part of the business as a non-profit, or even a cooperative. Preliminary discussions with business law experts suggest either approach would be feasible for the CSOP.
Community Stock Option Plan. Every household in The Next Newsroom’s home community automatically becomes part of a Community Stock Option Plan. This CSOP, in essence, creates community shareholders in The Next Newsroom.
Initially, these `shares’ are free and are designed to engage and involve The Next Newsroom’s home community in the business enterprise and a community of customers for The Next Newsroom’s services. As a CSOP member, every household gains access to annual meetings of The Next Newsroom’s annual Town Hall meeting to discuss progress and debate issues related to the operation.
And, all CSOP households will be partners in the Next Newsroom’s efforts to establish communitywide broadband access. This access, in turn, will give all CSOP households the opportunity to tap into local broadband Internet service.
Every CSOP household gains some privileges with The Next Newsroom. For example, each CSOP home can post calendar items, photos and other community content on pages that are published in print or online by The Next Newsroom.
Every CSOP household gets a Web page that can be accessed by The Next Newsroom. These are a kind of local MySpace pages, based on geography and family residences within the boundaries of The Next Newsroom distribution area.
CSOP household Web pages will be encouraged to include local photos, the interests and activities of the household, their vocations, local hopes and dreams.
Demographic data and e-mail addresses for the CSOP households will be shared with The Next Newsroom, on a basis negotiated around the terms of the CSOP.
The Next Newsroom will use data gathered from these CSOP Web pages to generate and connect a series of social networks that, in turn, will be asked to help gather news and grow a target audience for advertisers.
CSOP members in these local social networks must agree to receive targeted advertising pitches via e mail and other digital delivery.
Everyone who posts a CSOP Web page gets a free basic listing for garage sales, cars for sale, birth announcements, graduation announcements, engagement announcements, birth announcements, weddings, obits, etc. The Next Newsroom will endeavor to upsell many of the free features and services that come with CSOP membership to generate revenue to support the news.
These up-sells include:
- Enhanced obituaries, birth announcements, wedding and engagement announcements;
- Enhanced online and print classified ads;
- Expanded restaurant, service and business listings;
- More detailed pre school and life-long learning opportunities and listings;
For a fee, consumers also will be able to tailor their news and information packages to specific topic areas or needs that go beyond basic service. The tailored news packages could mean more sports/less sports, more photos/fewer photos, all obituaries/no obits, etc.
And, CSOP members will be offered the opportunity to lease or buy two higher-tier digital delivery vehicles. These options include:
- Electronic reading tablets. The Next News Newsroom project will contract with Sony, Fujitsu, or others, for leasing tablet/laptop devices that, in turn, will be leased to news consumers as part of a tiered service package. The Next Newsroom already has been working with the University of Missouri, and others, to develop digital reading software that creates a pleasurable reading experience on a tablet.
- Address-specific home printers. The Next Newsroom project will work with Hewlett-Packard and others to develop a home-printer model of content delivery for those who want to print out and read content.
Revenue estimate from new CSOP up sell and tiered and tailored content: $2.4 million The Next Newsroom projects 1/3 of the revenue will be generated through up sells to the CSOP households, and tiered and tailored content up sells to these households, including special project sales and sponsorships.
The Next Newsroom project assumes 50% of the households in the core community will actively read and participate in the Community Stock Option model. This means revenue estimates for these new revenue sources is based on an average of $9/month in sales from half of the total households (22,500 HH) in the target community.
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