Fwd: Updating Banyan Project

[Bill Densmore]

From: Mike LaBonte
Subject: Re: Updating Banyan Project

So far I've only read the first essay, but I have to say the three challenges it poses are right on:

1. Create self-sustaining web journalism business models.
2. Serve the broad public, not just the affluent.
3. Deliver journalism that people can trust.

Thank you Tom for all of the work you are putting into this project. You are assembling a great team and I will try to do what I can to help it succeed.

Mike

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Tom Stites <t...@tomstites.com> wrote:

Friends -- My work on the Banyan Project has inspired so many questions in so many quarters that I decided a few months ago to answer many of them by writing a series of three essays.  I finally found time to write a few weeks back, and this week the pieces were published on the Web by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, then cross-posted by the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities.

The essays explore the realities of today's crumbling journalism and lay out the reasoning to support the idea of journalism co-ops.  Haverhill plays a role in two of the essays, and given your interest in Banyan's planning for a pilot site in your city I thought you might want to read them.

Essay I:  http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/tom-stites-taking-stock-of-the-state-of-web-journalism/

Essay II:  http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/tom-stites-layoffs-and-cutbacks-lead-to-a-new-world-of-news-deserts/

Essay III:  http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/tom-stites-might-the-new-web-journalism-model-be-neither-for-profit-nor-nonprofit/ 

Here's wishing you all a meaningful holiday season!

Tom