Bootstrapping the media (Part 2)

Filed in archive Bootstrapping Opportunities on March 16, 2008

Besides Ben Yoskovitz's excellent suggestions for building a media empire, I've suggested before and will take this opportunity to say again that news remains high on the priority list no matter what type of media company you plan to build.

Maybe this has to do with my own professional bent, but I think it ultimately it remains a sound judgement.

Observe that:
• Much of what people talk about in the F2F world has to do with current events as well, especially the current events that affect their everyday lives.
• A survey of chat rooms and other communities will show you a very similar phenomenon.
• Bloggers drive this conversation on the Internet and big news stories or at least news stories of interest to a particular group do drive on line searches.

But how can a fledgling bootstrap media mogul also work to satisfy a niche with something as general and widely attainable as the news.

A couple of ideas come to mind as I re-launch my own on line media venture PostRanger.com.

• First focus on local or niche news, in my case news from my own local Allentown and larger Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metro area.
• Second focus on specialty news (I plan to offer blogs on alternative health, energy and the environment and perhaps also this and similar niche business and other special interest blogs to round out the content)

News content can be brief referring simply to other reports available on the net at first than with more original content as time goes on.

These news sources can be grown into more traditional publications in time. See Bootstrapping your newspaper startup-backwards (Parts 1+2)...