Welcome to McKinley Park News 4.0

The new logo of the McKinley Park NewsGreetings, Friends and Fans of the McKinley Park News!

I thank you for your attention and patronage of our micro-local news publication, especially everyone who has been reading, following and supporting us.

As you may know from past Letters from the Editor, our attention has been preoccupied with necessary business and platform development while our news coverage has limped along at a much slower pace than usual.

As a journalist, it’s been agonizing to sit on, shelve or delay great neighborhood news stories. I’m so sorry for this: to both the subjects of our reporting waiting for coverage and to our community that can, and should, expect a regular cadence of local news.

However, as a solopreneur trying to bootstrap an unfunded enterprise, getting our business together is a necessity to ensure the McKinley Park News can thrive and endure. Success is challenging in any industry; trying to build a business and make a living doing local news is an especially steep hill to climb nowadays.

Fantastically Useless

We’re flying solo here, too: Organizations like Northwestern University’s Medill School and LION Publishers have proved fantastically useless for help, expertise and support in too many operational areas of publishing outside of the newsroom (although we deeply appreciate the practical financial support we’ve received). No one is giving us a plan on how to run a neighborhood news business, and just figuring out what we might do has itself been a lot of work.

Fortunately, the end of the development tunnel is nigh, and we’re now ramping up to regular editorial operations. In addition to keeping our event listings and subscriber content current (as they have remained, even through our doldrums), we’ll look forward to growing our coverage back to a new neighborhood news item every weekday.

No Bending to AI

We’ve also solidified other elements of our operations moving forward: We will not, as previously considered, place our news content behind a registration wall in order to protect it from theft by artificial intelligence (AI) services powered by large language models (LLMs), despite their gross larceny of content and expertise from the McKinley Park News and so many others.

We’re encouraged by publishers’ lawsuits and public concern about this issue. We’ve also determined that closing off easy access to our news both disconnects us from our community and kills opportunity for critical advertising revenue, which would be another advantage for the AI companies that sell their own competing ads on top of our stolen work product.

Rat-Fink Thieves

Even though we could leverage AI in a number of ways, as a news business founded on the principle of a chain of trust through all operations, we won’t steal from others. Accordingly we will not use any AI service for our content or production, as none readily available ensure they’re not built on stolen goods. We’ve noted this moratorium against AI use and provided more information in our Editorial Standards and Practices.

Those who use AI services based on LLMs built with stolen training data – especially those connected to the news industry – are rat-fink thieves illegitimately exploiting others’ work and causing immense harm to the practice of journalism. Revenue from properly licensed AI training data should be supporting local journalism, but now it’s all just being stolen from us.

Platform Updates

Most of the updates to our platform — the open-source content management system we use to run the McKinley Park News — have been completed. As a user, you’ll notice this in improved navigation menus, better performance on mobile devices, some changes to layout and a more consistent user interface.

We’ve worked hard to retain and enhance our core branding, but you may notice improvements here and there, including our new logo and some great new website headers by local photographer Julie Jaidinger.

On the back end, huge changes have taken place, from upgrading our core hosting infrastructure through severing our use of services from misinformation-peddler, consumer surveiller, AI thief and key competitor Google. Some more tech changes are pending — we’re constantly working to improve performance — and some others you might see through snappier loading and new third-party resources for things like interactive maps.

Local News Business

On the business side of things, we’ve been getting our entire house in order to understand how, exactly, we can make a living with neighborhood journalism. Thanks to our bottoms-up development ethos and DIY practices, our out-of-pocket costs are an order of magnitude less than competitors. Years of operational experience allow us to precisely understand the labor required to produce our micro-local news product and manage the business and platform.

But the real question is: Where will the money come from? After a lot of work, our revenue plan has come into clearer focus. Thanks to Medill’s Metro Media Lab analysis, we determined that paid subscriptions could never sustain a neighborhood-level news enterprise, although they could contribute a piece of the revenue pie.

A significant revenue opportunity lies in advertising: That’s where Big Tech has been making all its money, after all. Local news deserts are starved not only for local news, but also a credible, reliable channel for local enterprises to reach and attract local constituencies.

Money for Journalism

Is there a big enough local market to sustain needed revenue in this way? We think there is. Our initial research into market sizing shows room for local enterprises to grow their business and presence through effective local advertising, even with extremely conservative assumptions of how much annual revenue a local enterprise might dedicate toward such.

A postcard speaks to brick-and-mortar retailers of the advertising and marketing services available on the McKinley Park News.Over years of operations, we have served dozens of local enterprises through our sponsorship and display advertising programs. Our pricing was consciously low in order to test the market and our platform, especially as we refined our business strategy.

I’m happy to announce we’re relaunching our sponsorship and advertising programs with new features and great opportunities for local marketing, for every size and type of business and organization.

Our neighborhood-level focus provides relevance for all in our community, and we’re reaching out to share how we can specifically help various types of prospective sponsors: brick-and-mortar retail, personal services, professional services, dining and entertainment, major consumer sales, commercial and industrial, local institutions, government agencies and advertising agencies.

Postcard in Mail

If you’re a local enterprise, you’ll likely be receiving word of this in the mail: Thanks to our Sustainability Audit grant from LION Publishers — and some great creative, printing and mailing services from vendor Liberty Creative Solutions — we’re sending out direct mail postcards to announce our sponsorship and advertising opportunities (with a big 20 percent discount for February sign ups).

We’ve also refined our digital advertising strategy and understanding of what we might offer and how we might offer it, especially in the face of rapacious competitors unfairly dominating all ends of the online advertising market, as well as a complete dearth of resources from the journalism organizations that should prioritize providing them

Thanks, Kenny!

Inspiration and strategy finally came through Kenny Katzgrau and the resources and intelligence his Broadstreet Ads company is freely sharing. We can’t thank them enough for contributing their expertise to the benefit of our industry and pointing out how local news can succeed in advertising. (Note that we’re not their customer: We’re still using our own, internally run ads engine.)

The very first photo published on mckinleypark.org depicting the future scion of the Local News LLC publishing empire.Some revenue will also come through things like our merchandise and our classified ads: recently renewed with on-demand, ala carte pricing and purchasing. We don’t anticipate these to be among the most significant drivers of revenue, but they’re still very useful and desired by those who do want them. Automation lets us provide services like this with very low overhead.

We also have a few legacy features pending in the wings for restoration — notably our Forums — and some member layout issues to tighten up. We also have ideas for great new features for our neighborhood. Moving forward, we’ll be rolling these out one at a time.

McKinley Park News 4.0

The title of this Letter from the Editor references the “4.0” status of the McKinley Park News, as we see this as the fourth major evolution of this website that serves the McKinley Park neighborhood:

• McKinley Park News 1.0 (2012)
  Launch of mckinleypark.org as a neighborhood events listing website.
   
• McKinley Park News 2.0 (2016)
  Transition to mckinleypark.news and a focus on providing original neighborhood news alongside events listings.
   
• McKinley Park News 3.0 (2019)
  Incorporation of Local News LLC as a start-up enterprise with the McKinley Park News as its flagship publication.
   
• McKinley Park News 4.0 (2024)
  Platform overhaul and launch of formal business operations toward sustaining the livelihood of a neighborhood journalist.

We have ideas for other steps, too, including how our platform might be used to benefit other Chicago neighborhoods that suffer from no real local news coverage. But first we need to make this work in McKinley Park.

Do you want to help? Please keep reading and engaging with the McKinley Park News. If you know any enterprises or organizations that might benefit from our marketing and advertising services, please send them our way.

I am so happy to finally be getting my head out of code and business research, and get back to the deeply satisfying practice of providing your neighborhood news. Now, there’s a plan and platform to make a living doing it.

I look forward to sharing a prosperous 2024 with you and the McKinley Park neighborhood. Thank you again for all of your support.

— Justin Kerr
Publisher, McKinley Park News