The local news crisis will be solved one community at a time
By Ellen Clegg & Dan Kennedy, NiemanLab
Local journalism is in crisis. “America’s local news has reached its death spiral phase” proclaimed the Columbia Journalism Review in 2018. Two years later, an oft-cited study out of the University of North Carolina found that some 2,100 community newspapers had ceased publishing since 2004, leaving the country with large swaths of “news deserts” — areas that are unserved by any local news source.
This week in community...
- 🌈 What comes first? Persuasion or Community?
- 🌈 Try starting with a micro-community
- 🌈 But what *is* community?
- 🌈 Building. Stuff. Is. A. Slog.
- QAnon infects churches — Axios
- Battle of the (Community) Brands — Patrick McCrann
- Why Most Communities Suffer From Positioning Problems (and how to solve it) — Richard Millington
- Crowds Are Good Or: how I feel less alone. — Galaxy Brain
- Integrating Community Across your Org with Scott K. Wilder — Masters of Community
- How a community CRM can help you scale — Carmen Taubman
- When the Clubhouse Doors Close: Discord Opens New Spaces to Create and Connect — ConnectedLearning lab
- For Local News, Americans Embrace Digital but Still Want Strong Community Connection — Journalism.org
- How The Discourse scaled its business model to 34 local news sites — Simon Owens
- The Binders isn’t a secret anymore. Where does the giant Facebook group go from here? — NiemanLab
🗞 News
- Orbit has raised $15M Series A to enable proactive community teams everywhere — Orbit
- Facebook and Instagram will now allow users to hide ‘Like’ counts on posts — TechCrunch
- Orbiit raises seed funding to automate the interactions within an online community — TechCrunch
- Announcing our Latest Profile Badge: the Certified Discord Moderator — Discord
- Forem release a mobile app — Forem
🎧 Podcasts
- Episode 57 - Given Millions of Dollars We Would Invest in Content for our Community — Peers Over Beers
- Community Pulse - Episode 59 - DevRel Around the World — Community Pulse
- Rosie Sherry: In the Court of the Community Queen (#65) — Penguin Latte
- EP95 - How to Nurture a Community of Super Users w/ Andreia Tulcidás — The Community Corner
- Episode 13: Rosie Sherry on Community as a Career — This Must Be The Place
- Podcast 341: Blocking the haters as a service — The Stack Overflow Podcast
- Why developer relations teams exist — Tessa Kriesel
🐦 Tweets
Join us now! https://t.co/PtvgZmnOSk So excited to talk to you all about my #DevRel journey and learn about where you are in yours. https://t.co/dAF8xFheEP
— Mary Thengvall (she/her) (@mary_grace) May 31, 2021
Folks on IG really liked this so I'm sharing here for all my twitter friends too — It's a full month of alternatives to the question "How are you?" Enjoy and share as much as you like 😘 pic.twitter.com/opRU5l2PsR
— Velloseraptor (@KatVellos) April 5, 2021
Open ur 👀.
— edmund 🧑🏾🚀 (@edmundamoye) May 28, 2021
Women make up 50% of the population anywhere you go. We should normalize a world that gets close to that in every sphere - including this hot thing called community.
Have you taken a look at my “Community Athletes” list?
I opened my eyes!https://t.co/MQFYhhzXnE
Controversial opinion: you shouldn't be spending much time on engagement tactics when your community is first starting.
— Evan Hamilton (@evanhamilton) May 25, 2021
How to get the lay of the land when you join a new community:
— Wes Kao 🏛 (@wes_kao) May 25, 2021
What’s normal around here?
What's celebrated? What's frowned on?
What's surprising or unexpected and why?
As you answer these questions you’ll start to piece together the puzzle of the unspoken rules and culture.
I have spent a significant amount of time on @Clubhouse 👋 since Jan of this year.
— Diana Morgan 🪐 (@grassrootscmgr) May 19, 2021
The app has so much controversy around it, but it could take off as a much needed refresh of what @Meetup is currently.
They need to start w/ what revitalizing virtual events means for community.
Social media encourages us to pick one thing and stick to it. But I'm guessing a lot of my #CommunityTwitter friends are multi-hyphenate.
— Noele Flowers (@NoeleFlowers) May 27, 2021
What's your "thing" that's not community?
(Mine's that I'm a singer/songwriter🎵)
Members (and groups) will graduate in / out of the communities you nurture.
— edmund 🧑🏾🚀 (@edmundamoye) May 24, 2021
Find out as much as you can about why, but don't forget to celebrate the entries / exits with your members. They are moving to sth that's more valuable to them.
Show your happiness.
1/2
Any meaningful relationship in your life likely took years to nurture and develop. Why would you expect online relationships with your community to be any different?
— Tom Ross (@tomrossmedia) May 31, 2021
