When Kim Grinfeder launched Grand Avenue News in September 2009 he deliberated over the right web design and finding the right programmers. But designing and launching the site was the easy part. The real challenges still lay ahead.
Early Challenges
Early in the game, several University of Miami professors approached Grinfeder, a visual journalism professor, with the idea of integrating Grand Avenue News and their class curriculum. Grinfeder embraced the offer. “I thought this was a great idea so I let their students go out and work on stories,” Grinfeder said. “In addition, I also sent out my students to do video assignments.” This strategy did not have the results he imagined.
There were too many students involved. The same residents were approached multiple times and became overwhelmed. Grand Avenue News quickly backed away from this strategy and regrouped, Grinfeder said, deciding only to allow advanced students to work on long-term stories and pay others to cover stories that needed a quick turnaround.
Grinfeder was also busy working out a deal with the Miami Herald. The initial plan was for Grand Avenue News to publish stories within the Herald’s site. “This was not going to work as we needed the freedom to have our own site and experiment without being dependent on their IT staff to make any changes we needed done to the site,” Grinfeder said.
Suzanne Levinson resolved that problem in the spring of 2010 when she joined the faculty as an adjunct professor. Levinson, also the online editor of the Herald, taught a graduate class on editing and site management. She also facilitated an agreement with the Herald where they would link to stories on the Grand Avenue News website. The Herald could also republish Grand Avenue stories in their print version in exchance for attribution.
By giving the Herald free content for their print edition, Grand Avenue News managed to reach a broader audience than they would have with an online-only version. “I have no doubt that this relationship between hyplerlocal news sites and larger metropolitan news sites will have it’s place in the future,” Grinfeder said. “The key will be to manage it in a way that it is advantageous to all parties involved.”
Working with the Community
Once the relationship with the Miami Herald was squared away, Grinfeder knew the next challenge was gaining the community’s trust and participation.
“While I knew several of the community members, one thing I was not counting on was that the University of Miami has a long history of doing projects in the neighborhood and not finishing what it started,” he said.
To create a positive relationship with the community, Grinfeder assigned the same students to the same areas. “Consistently showing up at events and meetings was crucial to our success in gaining the communities trust,” he said. People soon became familiar with them and trusted them.
The community is highly fragmented, he explained. Family rifts that are decades old still exist and rivalries between churches do not help unify the community. “I identified community leaders across the board and got them involved using several approaches,” Grinfeder said. “Most importantly, I was clear that we were not supporting any group over another, we were supporting the entire community.”
Success!
Once the work-flow with the Herald was in place, things seemed to move faster. Students were energized by the possibility of getting a story published in the paper and the community liked seeing that the Herald was covering their community. Traffic on the Grand Avenue News site rose. According to Grinfeder, their was website receiving about 1,800 unique visitors per month by June 2010.
Grand Avenue News also printed 5,000 copies of a print edition. They distributed them around town to churches, barbershops, laundromats, and anywhere else that would take them.
“The print version seemed to give legitimacy to our publication, I don’t really know how to explain it, but even readers that had consistently been reading our site online treated us differently,” Grinfeder said. “Story leads started flowing in and we started to get valuable feedback from the community.”
They also celebrated with a neighborhood block party. “There was a DJ, face painting, games, food, a raffle, computers setup for people to see the Grand Avenue News website, but most important of all, it was a great opportunity to sit down and talk to the community,” Grinfeder said.
What’s Next
Grand Avenue News is once again redesigning the site and plans to go live with a new site by the end of the summer. “I have several ideas, many of which I collected at the New Voices conference.” Grinfeder said.
His goals include increasing community member content—such as repeat guest columnists—and creating a newsroom out of two to three university classes.
“I am not sure what will work, but my impression is that a little of everything will be the model,” he said.
—Lori Grisham
