Got a journalistic product in mind? Let's hear it.

[George Miller]

Let's start kicking around potential product ideas. Post your target niches and how you want to reach them.

We can begin the conversation about funding our endeavors, but that is a bit premature. The first step is to recognize an under-served demographic.

[Brian James Kirk]

I have two ideas brewing.

One involves serving the under-covered Philadelphia technology scene. The goal would be to cover local technology news and connect those ideas with users and—with any luck—venture capitalists. A comparable site would be techcrunch.com. Our tech community lacks an authority; Media coverage of technology is sparing, and when available, fails to connect the dots for the community.

The second idea is a project aimed at covering and serving communities throughout Philadelphia. There's at least one important or interesting story on every block. The website would report a story for each block. Editorial content and citizen journalism would combine to meet this goal. An emphasis on an editorial process—even in regard to citizen coverage—would maintain integrity vital to users' return visits.

An additional facet would be working with local technology organizations such as WirelessPhiladelphia, Independents Hall and the Hacktory to help get internet access and computers into homes. WirelessPhiladelphia has maintained a "digital divide" mission to bridge the gap to under-served neighborhoods. A site covering the neighborhoods would offer additional incentive for community interest. And why not ask local tech organizations to donate their time to fix throw-away corporate and personal PCs into working stations for individual users?

Thoughts?

[George Miller]

About your second idea ...

I like it. It sounds like an academic project rather than a news venture, but an interesting idea nonetheless. I would invite you to check out EveryBlock, which is a news aggregator rather than a content generator.

How would you gather the info for your every block project? Would it be staffed or would you rely largely upon community input?

Speaking of community news and aggregators, I've been kicking around an idea for about a year or so. I want to establish a website that aggregates all of the news from all of the Philly neighborhood print publications - from the South Philly Review to the News Gleaner in Northeast Philly, from the Westside Weekly to the Chestnut Hill Local, and everything in between.

All of those places serve their own communities but sharing the tales with a wider audience would inform/ improve the city at large. Most of those papers have websites that are rather bad - hard to navigate and unpleasant to look at. Funneling their stories, images and video on to one Philly Neighborhood News site would benefit everyone included, I think.

In addition, forming a coalition would increase the reader base, and that might help bring national advertising (or at least more wealthy advertisers). It could be a service provided specifically to the local television news stations who don't have the resources to do their own reporting in neighborhoods (and since they don't do their own reporting, they tend to do only reaction style stories ... like crime).

While appealing to the national advertisers would be great, focusing on communities would keep advertising space relatively low for local advertisers.

Feel free to steal the idea and run with it (though I want a cut if you win $5 million!).

As far as the Tech idea goes, you are right. That is a niche that needs to be filled. There is an amazing amount of technology that is created in the Greater Philadelphia region. Many companies are based in the city and surrounding areas, and a lot of them have roots in our area colleges (check out Penn's Center for Technology Transfer). This technology website/ blog/ service (in whatever medium you choose) could be funded through the universities or the city or even the Chamber of Commerce (since it would become a marketing tool for all of those folks).

Yeah. Pursue it.

[Sandra Friedman]

For my pitch, I’ve decided to develop a music-oriented magazine and web combination project. There is no one definitive publication based out of Philadelphia that gives a long-term or seasonal look at upcoming shows and events in the music world. I want to put together a one-shot guide where people can reference all things upcoming. The niche would be music and youth oriented, although it could potentially include things that would attract an older audience as well.
Competition-wise, most local papers (including Philadelphia Weekly and Citypaper) do week-ahead listings of shows and things to do in the area. The problem with those is that the paper only lists events that week, most of which are often sold out by the time you read about them. If you go to specific websites such as Livenation or R5, they list their specific shows for upcoming periods of time, but who actually wants to take the time to dig through multiple websites when it would be so much easier to have one composite site?
The information included in this project will be an extensive guide to shows and venues in Philadelphia, reviews of prior shows, recommendations from venues of their highlights in the upcoming months, interviews with local bands and promoters, and hopefully promotions and deals for specific shows.
The information will not necessarily be different so much as offer more information in one place, making things easier for a reader. Ideally I would like to market this as a monthly magazine or leaflet paper of some kind, but it will absolutely make sense to be put together as a great website as well. This would involve looking into free webspace for the time being, in case there is no specific funding right away. Hopefully this would be the sort of thing enough venues and local music scenes would want to get involved in to come up with money to make a print copy as well as a web one.

[Bonnie Dugan]

What I originally wanted to do is create a publication for the youth of Philly, specefically those in the North/Northeast area. But after thinking about it, I'm sure it could expand to other neighborhoods in the Philadelphia area, because in reality many of the issues are the same. The publication would generally range from the ages of 14 to 23. What it would do is give the younger adults and teenagers a chance to voice their opinion about the current events going on within their surrounding neighborhoods. Not only would this give the youth a chance to speak out, but it also could give parents a better idea about what their children are going through. Many times children and young adults don't go to their parents about certain issues, such as gun control, gang rivals, peer pressure and drug use.
Most people of that age are embarrased to be mocked at and therefore stay quiet; however many of them have experienced similar problems and could help one another. In my opinion, the best writing comes from people who are passionate about their writing, regardless if they are a journalist or not, and passionate writing comes from first hand experiences. So what I would like to create is a network, where journalists and non-journalists can express their stories and experiences.
In addition to that, I would like to cover events going on within the neighborhoods such as festivals, concerts, tournaments, movie openings and more. Expose the teenagers and young adults to more things than just drinking in an alley way or in the woods (because yes that is what city people do). Basically, my ideal goal is to make an effort to give the younger generation a chance to change the system in the future, because right now adults are starting to settle with the fact that Philadelphia is increasing in crime and there's nothing we can do about it.
This would probably start off as a blog and hopefully gain enough public influence to become a written publication, where both journalists and non journalists can express themselves.

[emmaleerose]

My idea is inspired by my own personal experience as a high school aged girl, as a big sister, and as a former intern at CosmoGIRL! magazine, a national mainstream magazine tailored for teenage girls.

Here's my pitch:

While many of my female peers look fondly upon their high school years as their glory days of snagging dates with players of various sports teams and scouring the malls for that perfect tulle and charmuse prom dress in some horrific shade of fuchsia, I cringe and wonder just how I made it through. Rather than join classmates on shopping sprees at American Eagle, I was fascinated by the strange patterns and pieces from past decades of fashion at Salvation Army. I didn’t really go for the type of guy who ate jumbo cans of tuna raw in the cafeteria because he was “weight training,” I dated a super skinny guy who painted and played drums in a local indie rock band.
And even though I frequently skipped dances for shows, I couldn’t help but wish that the shows would be packed with kids my age like the dances were . I just knew there had to be more girls like me. Luckily today, with the overwhelming popularity of the internet and the expansion of the indie scene, I feel that the group I so desperately wanted to be sitting in my cafeteria exists in every high school. These girls are my niche. With a CosmoGIRL age bracket, a BUST mindset, and a NYLON aesthetic, I want to reach middle-high school aged girls in the indie rock, dare I say “hipster,” scene.
The format of my website would be similar in subject to today’s trendy teen magazines (with features, fashion, beauty, advice, and media sections) but its content would speak to its niche audience. For example, the fashion section would be similar to that of NYLON magazine’s, but it would feature clothes and looks that are financially attainable to high school students. The food page will feature an easy vegetarian dish that can be brown bagged for lunch at school.
The most unique aspect of my site would be its inviting tone for readers to contribute and participate in its formation. This niche of girls is primarily comprised of aspiring artists, musicians, designers, and writers, so why not give them an early dose of limelight? The “Snapshot” section will feature photos of readers donning great vintage finds that they found at local thrift stores. The “D.I.Y.” section will contain fun do-it-yourself crafts for the home and the wardrobe that the readers can enjoy.
The delivery method of the internet will be most successful in this niche, because this is a group of girls who already depend upon the internet to shop, find new music, and network among their peers. Due to the site’s welcoming of reader contribution, if the demand for a print publication is present (as well as an enormous amount of interest from advertisers as I make practically nothing working for a non profit vintage store -I’m trying to be realistic) then I would totally love to go for it!

Any thoughts/comments/criticisms/ideas?