Since it launched in April 2010, New Era News has attracted more than 114,000 visits from almost 80,000 unique visitors. Readership has been growing steadily, fueled to date by more than 27,000 Facebook referrals.
The site, which seeks to engage young people in politics and current events, relies on interns and volunteer writers to produce content. Recruitment has been robust. “There are currently about 60 people signed up with blogger accounts and about 15 signed up with guest blogger accounts on the site,” reports Executive Director Steve Fenberg.
Fenberg says that many former interns continue to contribute content even after their formal internship has ended. “We feel like we’ve built a strong foundation and have engaged thousands of young people in important political discourse that otherwise would not have become engaged,” says Fenberg.
After Facebook, search engines refer the most traffic to the sites.
While the site has been successful in raising one-time donations from individuals, it has been harder to attract support from businesses targeting young people because they often don’t have paid advertising budgets, Fenberg says. Moreover, the site is too small to attract support from large media funders. The plan going forward is to seek support from local family foundations.
As the 2012 elections get closer, the site plan to produce several series that include candidate profiles, explanations of ballot measures and other election-related coverage, Fenberg said.
“New Era News has been a fascinating project for us over the past few years,” he said.
-Emily Harwood
