Orem's Good News Paper, Real Local Journalism
10/20/23 Watch or Listen time is 0:20, Story by Tom (Treyeshua) Tomeny
Orem's Good News Paper is a prototype of what we believe will be the restoration of local news and real journalism.
In major metropolitan areas, local scale newspapers cannot compete due to the high costs of physical printing a paper. So important local news goes uncovered.
Since our only paper "paper" is a business card with a web address and QR code, that's all we distribute, for free, in Orem.
We write stories that are important to Oremites almost every day, and then post them each on their own page, along with buttons that link to our Good News Paper Youtube channel so our followers have the choice to Read, Watch, Listen, and Respond.
And we compile about a week's worth of stories into a Youtube playlist, so followers can watch or listen to them one after another to consume all.
And then followers can respond to the stories and engage with one another in the Youtube comments section of each story.
This activity will eventually generate enough traffic to our Youtube channel that we will start to get paid for all that content.
And we will share that revneue in some sort of proportional way, with those that create that content.
The goal is a veritable army of citizen journalists everywhere. Perhaps not getting wealthy, but at least getting paid, both from Youtube and from selling their own sponsorships in their own content, and/or through revenue sharing that on sponsorships that are sold regionally, nationally, or worldwide.
And it will be a community of citizen journalists, working alone at times, and also working together to restore local news.
The monetary investment is minimal, but the time investment may be very large. The key is to love it, to love bringing local news to your friends and neighbors, to make their lives better by doing so.
Each edition is probably best connected to a local city, as covering official city events is important for any news provider. Each edition will eventually have multiple sections, similar to traditional papers, and individuals can and should get together, at least virtually, to produce those editions. The suggested business model is to share the revenue proportionally among all content creators, whether for an entire edition, or a section of an edition.
The "secret sauce" is to do this together, as a network of citizen journalists, so that we can support one another and create a "monster" Youtube channel, together. The plan is to keep all of the financial information available to all participating with an online bookkeeping system for all to see.
My only physical expenses in starting this have been a good microphone to record audio, and the business cards that I have, for now, personally distributed. I do have some one time intellectual propery expenses, in URL's and trademark applications, bu that's about it.
Operating a news source is very tax advantaged, as you are working pretty much anytime you leave home. Constantly handing out the business card edition, and constantly "selling" those you meet on subscribing, while at the same time asking for story ideas. Most of your vehicle expenses and some of your meals may be tax deductible.
We will be happy to teach you how to configure a domain name and use Google Sites, which offers free hosting of web sites like this one. And how to send us videos to upload to our common Youtube channel, for putting all Good News Papers on one channel will be the way to sooner monetization. While top Youtubers like Mr. Beast get there by having millions of viewers for hundreds of videos, we will get there by having thousands of viewers for thousands of videos. Eventually, our total audience will be larger than Mr. Beast, since the market for local news is vastly larger than his market for outrageous stunts.
Please contact treyeshua@gmail.com or call 272-246-3669 if you are interested in this opportunity.