The McKinley Park News Is on Temporary Hiatus

Greetings, readers and fans of the McKinley Park News!

With the exception of a couple pending items, I have decided to take a temporary hiatus from publishing original local news in the McKinley Park News.

There are a variety of reasons for this. However, the discovery that "artificial intelligence" (or "AI") services have been stealing our content and expertise — and thinking through what this means for a local news business — is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Thieves Guild and Blank Stares

For years, I have been working around the clock on both our local news product and monolithic business and tech projects (while also dealing with some personal curve balls). Then I discovered that all of the McKinley Park News is seemingly being stolen for use in competing services without notice, permission or remuneration.

Even worse, after looking for help, I've found only a thieves guild of exploiters masquerading as "experts" within the journalism and media industries, and a miasma of blank stares from government and the legal system.

Two Big Projects

Meanwhile, I should be working on the McKinley Park News instead of these distractions. In addition to our core product of publishing local news, I certainly have plenty to do:

• The latest investment in our business planning is the local news sustainability audit from LION Publishers, a national news association of which we're a member. We've been accepted into this program, and it's going to be of great value toward fine-tuning a revenue plan that can support the livelihood of a neighborhood journalist. This also dovetails very well with the business development work we've already completed through the Metro Media Lab program at Northwestern University's Medill School.
   
• The upgrade to our publishing platform has continued and is nearly complete: We're now running on cloud-based infrastructure on the most recent stable version of the server programming language that powers the McKinley Park News; I've laid tons of groundwork for our new front-end layout frameworks (while retaining our branding); our internal analytics engine is up and running (replacing Google Analytics); and I've tested our big upgrade successfully in a development environment. Now I just need a chunk of time to conduct the upgrade, quality assurance and planned performance and other improvements.

Personally, I also need a reset. Entrepreneurship is exhausting, much less trying to establish business success alone with no funding in a withering industry battered by predatory competition and theft. It's been a very long time since I've had any opportunity for a personal interest or even self care, and I can't quit ignoring myself, as I can tell I'm burning out fast.

McKinley Park News 4.0

I'll still be working on the McKinley Park News this summer, but taking a break from news publishing will allow me to finally finish off the monolithic tech and business work required for us to get to the "4.0" version of our neighborhood news publication.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the AI problem, as I'm still not getting any help from anyone. As I've previously written, I can't move all our content behind a registration wall, because this will kill fundamentally necessary advertising revenue.

Pivot to Video?

One thing I'm considering is a pivot to video news, which we were working toward supporting anyway. Video is also seemingly more resistant to AI theft, but even this is fading as technology rapidly improves at scraping the content and expertise from audio and video, too. I'm not really sure what to do.

During our hiatus, the McKinley Park News website and all of its content and features will continue to be online and accessible to everyone. All of our neighborhood's Institutions will continue to be able to publish and manage their own events in our event calendars. I'm also continuing to update our subscriber-only content.

Returning Later This Summer

I expect and hope that our publishing hiatus will conclude later this summer. I'm certainly going to continue to focus on the McKinley Park News, now with an opportunity to finally finish off some of these big projects.

I don't know exactly what we'll look like when we return: I'll certainly keep you updated here as our plans and updates move forward. In the meantime, I deeply appreciate your attention, consideration and patronage. Thank you so much for helping to support the McKinley Park News!

I wish a lovely summer for you and yours. Cheers!

— Justin Kerr
Publisher, McKinley Park News