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davis_squareDear DSLJ neighbors,
Somerville Voices invites you to a brainstorming meeting to come up with great story ideas about our city.
We are about to start a new experiment in community-funded journalism, and we want to use your ideas!
In the year or so that Somerville Voices has been active, we have made an important discovery: Money helps.
We’ve had excellent posts, but only a limited number of stories that required serious digging. That’s because we have jobs and other obligations.
So the Somerville Voices group has decided on two ways to help pay for journalism:
One way: “Crowd-funding,” which works like this:
1. Someone suggests an idea for an article.
2. A writer offers to do it, and says how much it will cost. (The writer can be, but doesn’t have to be, the person who posts the idea.)
3. Readers pledge money for the article. Once enough is raised, the funds are collected, and then writer does the work and gets paid for it.
There’s more to it, but that’s the basic idea.
Spot.us, a group based in San Francisco, is using this model, and a Boston Spot.us group is getting organized—we’re part of it.
Our second funding idea: We will ask for donations to Somerville Voices and our editorial board will decide which stories and writers to fund—the way NPR works.
We’ll try both approaches. So bring your ideas for fascinating, edgy, and insightful stories to the meeting and we’ll try to get them written!
Sunday, May 17, 6 to 8 pm, in the Community Room at the Somerville Visiting Nurses Assisted Living Facility, 259 Lowell Street. Sign in at the desk and take the elevator or stairs to the 3rd floor.
The VNA facility is accessible to all individuals.
Sorry, we can’t provide child care.
If you need ASL or non-English translations in order to participate, please let us know by May 6th.
Hope to see you there!
Barry Rafkind
info (at) SomervilleVoices.org
Somerville Voices invites you to a brainstorming meeting to come up with great story ideas about our city.
We are about to start a new experiment in community-funded journalism, and we want to use your ideas!
In the year or so that Somerville Voices has been active, we have made an important discovery: Money helps.
We’ve had excellent posts, but only a limited number of stories that required serious digging. That’s because we have jobs and other obligations.
So the Somerville Voices group has decided on two ways to help pay for journalism:
One way: “Crowd-funding,” which works like this:
1. Someone suggests an idea for an article.
2. A writer offers to do it, and says how much it will cost. (The writer can be, but doesn’t have to be, the person who posts the idea.)
3. Readers pledge money for the article. Once enough is raised, the funds are collected, and then writer does the work and gets paid for it.
There’s more to it, but that’s the basic idea.
Spot.us, a group based in San Francisco, is using this model, and a Boston Spot.us group is getting organized—we’re part of it.
Our second funding idea: We will ask for donations to Somerville Voices and our editorial board will decide which stories and writers to fund—the way NPR works.
We’ll try both approaches. So bring your ideas for fascinating, edgy, and insightful stories to the meeting and we’ll try to get them written!
Sunday, May 17, 6 to 8 pm, in the Community Room at the Somerville Visiting Nurses Assisted Living Facility, 259 Lowell Street. Sign in at the desk and take the elevator or stairs to the 3rd floor.
The VNA facility is accessible to all individuals.
Sorry, we can’t provide child care.
If you need ASL or non-English translations in order to participate, please let us know by May 6th.
Hope to see you there!
Barry Rafkind
info (at) SomervilleVoices.org
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