Tag Archives: MinnPost

Nieman Journalism Lab: MinnPost editor on new audience building strategy

Valuing returning readers over vagrant visitors, a strategy extolled by Gawker a few weeks back and termed “reader affection”, has caught on at non-profit investigative site MinnPost. Speaking at the ASNE NewsNow Ideas Summit this week, editor Joel Kramer announced that MinnPost is also a fan of the affection metric, and aims to build up a “community of intensely engaged followers”. From Nieman:

The strategy, for MinnPost, is a financial as much as an editorial one: It’s about concentrating impact, but also about monetising that impact. The outlet’s ultimate goal in developing a core readership, Kramer said, is to “convert that community into enough money to sustain the journalism”.

Full story at this link…

Read Journalism.co.uk’s interview with Kramer at this link.

MinnPost moves ‘Real-Time’ ads out of beta

Initially launched in June this year, non-profit, online-only news site the MinnPost has moved its innovative ‘Real-Time Ads’ system out of beta, according to a post on the site’s blog.

The service aggregates tweets, blog posts and other feeds from local businesses to produce a more timely message to readers.

Eight paying customers have signed up so far and the site is offering a four-week trial to new customers ($25 a week for orders of five weeks or more).

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk in July, CEO and editor of the site, Joel Kramer said 24 beta testers signed up for the beta Real Time Ads within the first fortnight – advertisers who are ‘open to experimentation’.

“Many of those local advertisers weren’t familiar with online yet. They have to educate themselves and we have to teach them,” he adds.

In the video interview with Nieman Journalism Lab below Kramer explains the thinking behind the ad system:

Nieman Journalism Lab: MinnPost trials ‘real-time’ advertising

Not-for-profit start-up the MinnPost is experimenting with – to use Nieman’s words – ‘a new form of advertising that looks a little bit like print classifieds, a lot like Twitter, and nothing like traditional marketing on the internet’.

(MinnPost experiments with real-time ads from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo)

Real-Time Ads aggregates tweets, blog posts and other feeds from local businesses to produce a more timely message to readers.

Full story at this link…

Beatblogging.org: Not-for-profit MinnPost news site raises $13,190 in micro-donations

MinnPost, a non-profit journalism organisations that publishes MinnPost.com, has raised $13,190 after calling on users and supporters to make micro-donations.

While a significant chunk was donated by the Harnisch Foundation, MinnPost users gave $6,595, with more opting to pay $25 than $10 from the two suggested amounts.

This isn’t a long-term business model (and the MinnPost isn’t setting it up as such), but is this a sign that readers will pay for hyperlocal news?

Full post at this link…