About pressforthePeople™

We want to empower citizens by providing access to superior reporting and the platform for community organization necessary for the people once again to become powerful participants in democracy.

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First steps: Seventeen questions that we'll use to convince media outlets, investors and the community itself that a responsible press is the best possible business model.
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Rep. Patrick Kennedy Calls Lack of Press Despicable

What Happened to the News?

The biggest question in news today is not how to produce journalism, which lots of people can do well; it’s “how do you pay for journalism?”

Once upon a time, you could pick up a newspaper or watch an evening newscast and be reasonably sure that you knew what was going on in the world. Remember Walter Cronkite’s sign-off on CBS News, “And that’s the way it is.” The New York Times still boasts that it provides, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

The reality, though, is that American news operations are in trouble. The New York Times spent much of 2009 threatening to close The Boston Globe, which it owns and bought for more than one billion dollars in the nineties.

Lots of people will tell you that the problem with the news media is that the revenue streams that supported journalism for decades are disappearing. While it’s clear that the traditional advertising-supported news model is failing to produce the needed revenue, we contend that a failure to adequately serve news consumers has long predated today’s economic crisis.

Eyeballs for Sale!

We believe the problem is the business model itself. We all know that corporations make a product that a customer buys. Right? So, what does a news corporation make? Before you say news, consider for a second who picks up the tab at a typical news operation. Many people say they won’t pay for news, because they’ve gotten used to consuming it for free. While free is nice, it costs money to produce news and somebody has to pay. In America, that somebody is almost always an advertiser. So, if the advertiser is purchasing a product from a news corporation, what product are they buying? It’s not news. It’s eyeballs, your eyeballs. News companies attract your attention with stories, they then sell your attention to advertisers, who hope you’ll see their product and buy it.

So, what’s the problem with this model? Well, for one thing, news companies are rewarded for picking stories that attract a lot of eyeballs. Unfortunately, the most popular story is not always the most important story. Even more troubling is the basic concept that corporations like happy customers, because they spend money. News stories don’t always guarantee happy customers. Whether those of us who have spent a career in this industry like to publicly admit it, news companies sometimes avoid stories that displease advertisers. While that’s great for the advertiser, it’s not good for you.

You’re Our Customer

At pressforthePeople, we intend to fundamentally change the business model for news. Instead of making a product for advertisers, we want to make a product for you, the news consumer. Our product is credible, reliable information about your world. It’s why we’re called pressforthePeople. The philosophy changes everything.

We’ll pick stories that empower and inform you. We will always champion accuracy and getting it right. We will not promote agenda, but rather will provide you with the highest quality information so that you can responsibly make up your own mind. You are our customer. You are the one we want to please.

If we’re writing about a power company jacking up its rates, we won’t worry about losing ad revenue. You’re our customer.

If we’re writing about a powerful politician, we won’t fret about him calling our boss and pulling some strings. You’re our customer.

You Can Make it Happen

So, how do we make this idea a reality? We hope you will buy our product.

As mentioned earlier, a lot of folks believe you cannot sell news. And we agree, it might be hard to sell general news, which is what most organizations produce. So, we’re initially going to focus where others are not. How? Think about an issue that captures your passion. Maybe it’s education or the environment or energy. How good a job does the mainstream media do on the issue that you care about most?

According to Unity, more than forty-six thousand journalism jobs were cut in less than two years. All those cuts, added to a long-term trend of shrinking news budgets, mean there are fewer reporters who have time to specialize. Most are generalists who chase different issues everyday. It’s a recipe for shallow reporting.

At pressforthePeople, our goal is to build teams of reporters who exclusively focus on specific issue areas. They’ll provide you streams of high quality, professional journalism about the issue you care about most. But perhaps more importantly, we will deliver our best stories to a network of television, radio and print partners in the mainstream media.

Your subscription to a pressforthePeople newsbeat focused on a specific issue will guarantee that the issue you care about most gets covered far better in the mainstream media than it’s covered today.

So Where Will We Start?

We’re asking you to help us decide where to start by committing in advance to subscribe to a product that does not yet exist. Tell us which issue we should cover first. We have a minimum budgetary requirement to launch a newsbeat, and once we reach that number with commitments for real revenue from real subscribers, we’ll collect payment and begin producing stories on that issue. We’ll start by launching the first newsbeat that pays for itself. Then, as you tell us through your subscriptions that we need to ask a team of reporters to focus on another issue, we will create additional newsbeats to cover different issue areas.

How Much for a Subscription?

Right now, we are introducing our idea. Soon, we will announce subscription prices and our funding goal. At that time, we will also provide you a way to become one of our first founding subscribers.

Your subscription will guarantee you access to a high quality stream of information. Your subscription will also guarantee that Texans across the state will learn a lot more about the issue you care about. Finally, you will have helped create a new form of journalism – one where the news consumer is the actual customer. We believe this puts the incentives in the right place. To keep you happy, we will be motivated to produce an extremely high quality and meaningful news product. We won’t be trying to please an advertiser or a large donor. We will be working for you – our news consumer.