Young people who move to Philadelphia sometimes ask me how to get better connected in Philadelphia. And the figures suggest there is a growing number of them.

I’ve found myself offering up the same handful of suggestions more than a few times.

1. Attend Young Involved Philadelphia events — The group is a great hub of smart, hungry, young Philadelphians. Your city probably has one like it.
2. Join the Philadelphia Sports Network or another recreational sports league — These groups are great at bringing people together around sports, and most cities have something like them.
3. Join your neighborhood civic or block group — Most neighborhoods that are attracting new Philadelphians have active community groups that improving the city and connecting the civic minded. If your neighborhood doesn’t have one, then start one.
4. Find an online community that fits your interest — Whether it be sports or technology or drinking or your part of the city, someone is probably writing and hosting events that will attract people like you. If not, start one.
   They’ll find you.
5. Rock social media — There are probably smart people on Twitter in your city. Find them. Engage with them. Ask them to grab coffee. And, hey, don’t ignore online dating if you’re looking for that.
6. Embrace an institution — Maybe your university has an alumni group in your new city. If not, find a museum, advocacy group or another institution that has a young friends group or something else.
7. Volunteer — Find a nonprofit, political group or mission group that has value to you. Volunteer and find people like you.

My first trip to the Pen & Pencil Club on Jan. 28, 2009. Photo by George Miller

After more than three years of visiting and even longer being fascinated by its role, I’ve become a member of the Pen & Pencil Club, the country’s oldest press club, dating to 1892.

The private club, in a narrow shotgun building between parking garages on a narrow alleyway, requires sponsored membership, and following months of recent scheduling conflicts, Swarthmore Professor, former Daily News photographer, Pulitzer Prize winner and friend Jim MacMillan helped sign me into the club on Monday, March 26.

I’ve happily gone a few times since, each time with a friend in the press, and I’m eager to become more of a regular, being respectful of the club’s long history and existing members.

From awards and a journalism open house to coworking, media criticism and more, I’ll be interested in learning what leadership hopes to do with the famed P&P, following a recent renovation of its ground floor.

I think the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. is cool, like many other organizations dedicated to representing big, beautiful cities. Let me know underscore, I am proud to have GPTMC and their ilk representing Philadelphia.

Still I also think a lot of other people are doing similar work and GPTMC and their peers could do some cool partnerships:

1. Give your city swag to Couchsurfers and AirBnB users — Restauranteurs court the most prolific Yelp users by hosting taste sessions. Similarly, tourism agencies should have an annual parties for the most active hosts on sites like Couchsurfing.org and AirBnB. These people are natural spokesmen and interact with travelers who spread the word about where others should visit. A welcome bag with cheap swag, fun maps, some basic information in little bag. Keep it simple, give a few dozen bags to a few dozen surfers. It’d be a small gesture with ramifications.
2. Make a Wiki list of volunteer tour guides for specific topics — Use your social media connect to drum up a few passionate residents of your city who might be willing to offer an hour or two to show off specific parts or corners of your city in a way that tour businesses can’t. Someone would love to show off about the restaurant scene or the tech scene or a specific neighborhood or the post-industrial collapse and revitalization of a given community. Whatever. Create an army of in-person boosters.
3. Lobby for changes to I-95 corridor signs — Whenever one drives northbound on interstate 95 from D.C. and Baltimore, one sees highway signs making clear that that road leads to a major city called New York. It’s a method of orientating travelers, but it underscores that Philadelphia is not seen as a destination. That’s a problem and, well, just plain inaccurate.
4. Be the magic hand of changing Philadelphia’s influence globally — GPTMC is particularly adept at fun splashy advertising and displays of the city. They do a great job. Most of them — including the ‘With Love’ campaign — are everything I’d want in a regional campaign, however I’m always sensitive to the idea that the best sales technique is one you don’t make. That is, tourist maps in travel agent offices in the Netherlands that include smaller cities but not Philadelphia are perfect examples of what I think do a lot to make the city seem less influential.
5. Hire city boosters to change perceptions elsewhere — OK, this is a bit more outrageous, but I’m so taken by the stories of 19th century urban boosterism, that I’d be fascinated to see how it might exist today.

What they already do that I love:

• Provide videos and photos of the region for others to use

I have been blessed to attend the last two national Online News Association conferences, one in D.C. and last year’s in Boston.

This year, the celebrated, 13-year-old organization will host its annual event of more than 5,000 members in San Franciso to offer some geographical balance to the affair. There is some call for a Midwest event in 2013, which might make sense, but whether it’s next year or in 2014, the conference, expo and meeting of the minds of news innovation should happen in Philadelphia.

Updated: Apparently Philadelphia is booked for 2014. So, uh, 2015?

I’m part of a small group in Philadelphia lobbying for the effort, which includes a formal application process, and that application is being submitted. Still, I felt it worth sharing what appears to me to be the clear reasons why this would be an easy decision.

Here are 10 reasons:

1. ONA has never had a national convention in Philadelphia, even though the national student and black journalist society’s have convened here.
2. Philadelphia is actually a city people will want to visit, having one of the most walkable downtowns, a vibrant restaurant community, history, culture, music, neighborhoods and impact. Oh, and it’s cheaper than all those other big cities.
3. It has a major convention center, in addition to several major hotels, like the Center City Marriot, both of which can handle an even larger conference space.(And hey, the notoriously overpriced Convention Center has cut a major part of its labor costs recently.)
4. Supportive major media, including representatives of Philly.com (and a need for new newspaper ownership to be close to anything innovative), TV representatives from NBC 10, staff from public media WHYY and the country’s largest entertainment company Comcast.
5. Supportive institutions, like the William Penn Foundation, major journalism program Temple University, and their new spinoffs the Center for Public Interest Journalism and PPIINN.
6. Vibrant independent media, both in print, online, in communities and otherwise. see BCNIphilly.com
7. Active, growing technology and innovation community, which has impact and interest in media, see phillytechweek.com and the local Hacks/Hackers community.
8. ONA leadership has relationships here, in addition to Philly.com’s Wendy Warren, the founding CEO of the new PPIINN initiative Neil Budde is a former ONA board member.
9. It’s near a lot of people and members, considering that Philadelphia is within a train or bus ride of the densest hub of markets in the country, where a good chunk of ONA members are.
10. Active local ONA chapter, though it was revived relatively recently, see here for membership.

In journalism conversations, there is a lot of concern about the need for a public square, a place in which a community can learn and share a common set of facts.

It’s something I’ve talked about in research from the Knight Foundation. The concern of filter bubble, in which the personalization of the web allows us to only reach information that confirms our beliefs, rather than challenges it.

Nationally and in some cases statewide, there is a growing patchwork of meaningful journalism practitioners. Though lacking in many ways, there is a wealth of niche and hyperlocal news providers developing in many corners of the country.

But the hole remains in broader metro regions, where broader metro daily newspapers have been hardest hit. They were, largely, the purveyor of these common sets of facts to build broader community.

We aren’t witnessing the end of this powerful form, I believe, we are simply waiting for the transition.

Because it has the infrastructure of a major market with mission-orientated for-profit and nonprofit groups and because it has all the big problems that other cities face, Philadelphia should be the country’s hub of social entrepreneurship.

Defined as ventures that put impact over profit, I again spoke about this cause, this time at an event with the Knight Foundation, the Delaware Valley Grantmakers and 30 other industry leaders at the University City Science Center last week. See the presentation I gave here.

See the Technically Philly coverage of the event here.

It was a variation of this presentation, which built off this post on why Philadelphia’s regional distinction should be social enterprise.

“Every problem is an opportunity to build ventures for solutions, scale them and export them to other cities,” as Generocity quoted me as saying. I followed a stirring 20-minute review of the 30-year development of social entrepreneurship, as given by Cheryl Dorsey, the president of the noted New York City-based Echoing Green.

To move the effort forward, we’ll be working on broadening the regional stakeholders who see this as a sensible distinction for Philadelphia and working to build in and build up the mission in organization’s based in and around this city.

After presentations, there was a large group discussion, led by the Knight Foundation’s Donna Frisby-Greenwood, on ways to move forward the effort, concepts that were drilled down in more specific ways in smaller groups. See notes from the discussions here [PDF].

In organizing the event, I came across new organization I hadn’t known had roots in Philadelphia, including an annual sustainability-focused social entrepreneurship event and Halloran Philanthropies, which focuses on social ventures.

It occurred to me that it was more than a year ago that I was beginning to really think about the need for a stronger sense of regional entrepreneurial identity. We needed hungry entrepreneurs and if Philly already has some of them, we need them to be hungrier, bolder and sell the region’s assets more.

Neil Budde in July 1997 as Wall Street Journal interactive editor. Photo by Ted Thai for LIFE magazine.

A leader for a major public affairs journalism project at Temple University in Philadelphia began his role last week.

I was excited to find in February that Neil Budde, whose claim to fame is being the founding editor of WSJ.com, would be the CEO of the new, temporarily-named Philadelphia Public Interest Information Network. Everyone closer to the project than I and others who know Budde in other ways have all had positive remarks.

The impact of an organization like that on information communities in Philadelphia can be a thrilling thing to watch. By way of full disclosure, I did have early-stage conversations about the position and the project on the recommendation of others. That said, I’m eager to have further discussion with Budde.

With all that said, I wanted to share some thoughts on what goals Budde might seek in his first 100 days the PPIIN CEO.

First, I want to underscore the obvious.Budde is among the industry vanguard. I am a 20-something, small-time news entrepreneur. These are just thoughts.

In the first 100 days:

• First 100-days OUTCOMES: Kickoff event with initial organizational branding, goals and objectives, initial hire(s) and announcement of ownership of OpenDataPhilly.org to provide a forward-thinking role of the organization.
• Week 1: Meet with Center for Public Interest Journalism staff and search committee members, begin basic administrative duties and details, call for suggested direction, input and needs.
• Weeks 2 and 3: Meet with key stakeholders, including other relevant CEO candidates, legacy and independent media leaders, nonprofit, institutional and other broadly influential groups, focus heavily on primary mission.
• Week 4: Release initial RFP, suggestions or call for ideas on name, branding of PPIIN, in addition to continuing to hear other outside perspective and review JLab, OMG, Opus and other source materials.
• Weeks 5 and 6: Develop key governance needs for ownership of OpenDataPhilly.org, a fundamental role for PPIIN and clear, first step to show movement and relevance of this initiative.
• Weeks 7 and 8: Highlight one to three primary hires and develop initial job descriptions, likely in the business strategy, development and fundraising roles, informed by clearly defined mission.
• Week 9: Begin plans to host kickoff reception featuring clear announcements, direction and calls to action, include initial naming and branding choices. Work with incubating group CPIJ to organize the first comprehensive news/journalism/media community calendar to grow partnership and awareness. (Keep it simple to look like this)
• Weeks 10 and 11: To better inform initial hires, determine clear, initially-ordered priorities from ideas such as: internal business strategy, initial fundraising, cross-platform advertising and sales network, membership or other technology support, news and information incubation program, OpenDataPhilly.org growth and/or Our Philadelphia public financing database partnership role.
• Weeks 12 and 13: Begin hiring one to three primary hires, including objectives for three-to-five year strategic plan and independence from CPIJ.
• Weeks 14 and 15: Host kickoff reception to unveil naming, branding, mission and clear goals and objectives moving forward.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the country’s largest, oldest and most influential.

Still, founded in 1876 and looming on the Ben Franklin Parkway for 90 years, the Museum’s leadership knows being a historic, cultural icon in Philadelphia doesn’t make it immune to financial distress. The bankruptcy of the once legendary Philadelphia Orchestra has made that clear.

It’s with this that several of the museum’s most active board members brought together in late January something of a focus group of mostly 30 and 40-something young leaders in Philadelphia to help discuss its future. Thankfully, Liz Dow of Leadership Philadelphia, which largely invited the focus group members, brought me into the conversation.

The conversation largely lacked a focus that is most often seen as a determining factor in successful focus groups. Still, the 90-minute lunch and dialogue was interesting enough that more than a month later, I find myself with a few dozen swirling thoughts on the subject. I wanted to share them here.

• The Museum of Art, like the orchestra and opera and ballet and other large, old, cultural staples, is vital in characterizing Philadelphia as the international city that it largely deserves to be.
• Most any of the cultural organizations in Philadelphia I know have some rather affordable opportunities, but they are not widely known in new communities or not seen as practical. For example, a trip to the museum on the first Sunday of any month is far cheaper than the average family trip to a Phillies game, but I doubt most of my neighbors in Fishtown know it.
• To follow through in making sure more people about it, all projects and outreach efforts the Museum has (including Art after 5 and first Sunday discounts) should follow three steps in identifying (a) the program itself, (b) the outreach effort to reach the intended audience and (c) the followup, which appears to be most missing, in which there is a sense of how to ensure that audience is following through. i.e. Sure, the Museum is pay-as-you-go-admission on the first Sunday of every month, and, sure, every student that comes through in a school trip may get a flyer about museum programming, but is that having the desired impact?
• For a future focus group, the Museum needs to make more clear what its goals are: does it want more members or more occasional or one-time visitors; does it want more racial or class diversity? Strategies surely vary depending on these goals, and a focused goal matters.
• What attendance is most important to grow?: members, tourists,  young professionals (future members?), middle-class families, working class or low-income residents, or someone else? The more specific, the more successful.
• In addition to its traditional board of directors, the Museum should have an outreach board, made up of leaders in the various communities it wants to reach. Those members can spread awareness of first Sunday discounts at civic association groups and in church basements.
• A cultural institution is allowed to be stuffy, indeed it is inherent in its branding. Still, offering a pathway to its understandings has been an entrenched goal for at least a generation, which is why field trips and youth classes have become staples at cultural institutions across the country.
• Three ways the Museum has to be competitive: (a) the traditional, to be seen as a force in the vanguard of art, (b) the cool, to attract the art leaders of tomorrow, (c) outreach, to be accepting, tolerant and offer access for the future.
• To have impact in the above three ways, a clear online editorial strategy should be adopted to connect its museum programming to the more viral online world. The Museum should have filled the role of theartblog.com before it existed, but it still has the opportunity to be an informational umbrella group for art in the city. Yet the Museum’s web presence is still rather limited and nowhere near as visionary as its leadership might suggest its collections are. [Disclosure: Yes, I do this for a living, but it seems to relevant to not mention.]
• The exhibit of work from Zoe Strauss, a young, living, local photographer, was celebrated as being innovative and buzzy, kicked off with a DJd event. So why not have a small, dedicated wing for a standing exhibit for a (perhaps young) active, emerging Philadelphia artist? It can be both marketing for the future, footprint in cool and homage to its city’s respected art community.

MinnPost CEO Joel Kramer has dinner with a collection of Philadelphia journalism stakeholders.

A small group of journalism practitioners in Philadelphia were treated with the chance to have dinner and throw questions at MinnPost CEO Joel Kramer Tuesday night. Kramer is the former publisher of the Minneapolis Start-Tribune and a frequent example of success in growing public affairs journalism online.

I was blessed to be among them and certainly took the chance to ask an array of questions about his efforts of building a statewide public policy news nonprofit that I haven’t seen answered in the considerable coverage of his efforts.

Among the celebrated local news representatives there was the newly named CEO of the local journalism institute at Temple, Neil Budde.

Though much more was handled in the 90-minute conversation that followed a public Q&A session that I heard was well-attended and lively, I wanted to share some notes I took out of this more intimate, though on-the-record, setting.

• “Quality journalism can’t be done in for profit because it’s a public good not consumer good. A journalism outfit can no more than a museum turn a great profit in the future.”
• MinnPost uses Acceptiva as its CRM to collect and manage donations.
• 20 percent of revenue comes from foundations, and at least a quarter comes from memberships, part of a diverse revenue stream that put them in the black in 2011. MinnPost offers no membership benefits at all because, as Kramer put it, “fulfillment is a huge pain.” He added that Minnesota public radio has more membership staff than his entire 18-person operation.
• Being on the MinnPost board requires ‘significant financial support,’ he said, and is a sought after board title. “Buzz is important, and that’s something that other efforts have failed to garner in their markets,” he said.
• Kramer has a rule of thumb: one-sixth of Minnesota’s adult population is the audience goal for public affairs news.
• For readers who come more than four times a month to a site there is a big jump in memberships, though most users don’t donate across in all categories, even ‘intense users,’ he said.
• Commenters don’t want solicitations, and they’ve accused MinnPost of spam when they confused those channels of email signups.
• Donors (of all kinds, including members, presumably), are added to their email newsletters, as an opt-out feature. They are solicitated consistently.
• MinnPost has 3,000 donors, compared with 120k at their NPR affiliate. “Those 3,000 may likely donate to both.”
• “We don’t negotiate with advertisers,” he said. . They sell ads on a per week basis, on a per-share of the site audience (i.e. six sidebar square ads running and being served in rotated basis), not based on CPMs, but basically $12-$15 CPM rate.
• MinnPost is still having success with its real-time ads that made a lot of buzz a couple years ago.

• They have a $1.6 million annual budget, about $400k of which comes from ads. They started out with more than $1.2 million in capital before ever writing a story. It helped that Kramer was the former publisher of the Star-Tribune, so he came with considerable credibility and business acumen.
• MinnPost Has one FT adsales and just brought k another. 90 clients, the new one will take smaller 65
• Kramer and his wife do not take salaries, though Kramer says they are building into the model enough revenue that his successor would be able to be paid.
• They have a handful of editors and three staff writers, but the majority of their site content is created by contract writers who take on weekly contracts, allowing for their flexibility and MinnPost to keep them off benefits.
• “Beginners can’t do things the MinnPost way,” he says. “We want quality not comprehension,” so their site only covers what it has the staffing expertise to cover.
• In terms of output: 20 items a day, 8 real stories, others are wire and short items
• Sustaining memberships that have opt-in recurring charges are more than 70 percent retention and are what they pursue.

Ownership concerns be damned, the publisher of the largest news organization in one of the largest markets in the country needs to make a major shake up in company structure and output or face a continued decline.

The Philadelphia Media Network, owners of the city’s two daily newspapers and most trafficked news site, announced almost 40 more editorial layoffs and buyouts this month, prompting speculation of another sale. The perception of leadership at the paper has been seriously damaged with a growing number of reports of editorial interference, particularly around coverage of the potential sale, though they’ve happened before.

Fears have risen that an investor group led by former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell could be a biased fifth owner in six years for the company. News of what damage bias could do the organization has clouded the root frustration that the company is failing.

While ownership bias has dominated the coverage, I’m most concerned that no one whose news innovation vision garners much contemporary respect is at the organization’s helm. That’s what is most keeping rhythm to the slow drumbeat of expectations for failure that has been heralded for a decade.

Below, find some initial, broad thoughts on how the organization might be reshaped.

Remarkably in the less than a decade I have been in Philadelphia, I have watched four ownership structures come with brief periods of excitement and no bold change. Anything that has been announced this go-around has either been underwhelming — a sports-focused weekly edition, a suburban hyperlocal — or has looked not much more than a good press release — a stalled tablet initiative or a foundation-subsidized incubation effort.

[As always with Philadelphia media, there are too many disclosures to offer here. Just assume I have close relationships with people involved in all of these organizations I mention here.]

Even with more layoffs and further brand decline, institutional structure keeps PMN’s properties as among the most important in the region, but it cannot be overstated that without a dramatic shakeup, their relevance can and will continue to lessen.

Looking elsewhere in corners of the media landscape that have always been an afterthrought to the dominant daily newspapers, innovation stirs.

At public media outfit WHYY, its editorial team is trying to build a collaborative and hyperlocal space with its 18-month old NewsWorks initiative. At Philadelphia magazine, the century-plus-old city glossy is bolstering its web presence with the Huffington Post model — as many high profile contributors as it can manage. At the local NBC affiliate, its web and mobile strategy has earned it the largest online audience shy of philly.com. Circling its wagons in suburbs surrounding the city is the digital first effort at the Journal Register Company, and so a major partnership there could impact the region profoundly. Most other city-wide efforts fall far short of innovative, particularly among the local TV affiliates, though the co-ownership of CBS3 and news radio KYW has always been an opportunity.

In short, the ecosystem is evolving and no one can bet on the existence of a robust daily newspaper here forever.

The reason why Rendell’s PMN bidding-rival developer Bart Blatstein’s plans to launch a news organization to combat PMN seems a short-term fight, if plausible at all, is because with so much else already happening, the real strength of the daily papers and its dot com is longevity. Even if he already bought the building, Blatstein would not only have to compete with the daily newspapers but — lest he forget — the growing list of region-wide news efforts. PMN’s properties stay out front because they’ve been here so damn long that inertia alone has kept them relevant.

But that can’t be PMN’s defense forever.

In 2006, the Inquirer had an editorial staff of roughly 400. The Daily News was always considerably smaller, perhaps fewer than 100 at that time, and they went through another recent round of buyouts in October, with increasingly small perks. Staff numbers are hard to come by today, but with the continue decline, it may be fair to suggest that the two share a combined staff of fewer than 300. For comparison, the Inquirer alone, I’ve been told, had more than 600 reporters and editors as recent as the late 1990s, though I allow for some exaggeration.

There’s some understandable hand-wringing about the impact of these falling numbers and an imploding company, but the reality remains that sheer legacy will sustain this company’s properties for a time. And other efforts abound.

Without a dramatic change, it is without question that the organization will eventually die, or, to be more precise, cease to be the clear news leader in Philadelphia.

To shift that course, this is what the Philadelphia Media Network should publish:

• Philly.com: Run a lean hub site, as I’ve previously suggested, serving as an editorial fire hose, but also being home to compelling video content and content from the below sources.
  Staff of 50: Community managers, sales representatives, video producers, data specialists, web analysts
• Daily newspaper: Folding the staffs from both dailies and maintaining the Inquirer brand, the newspaper should further shed staff and focus on core areas (local and state politics, investigative, crime and business), in addition to heavily vetting and copyediting contributions from various independent and partner news outlets, in addition to individuals. The big voice still looms large, so they have an opportunity to be filled with rich content from a variety of sources, and profit against that. Reporters are plentiful, editors scarce.
  Staff of 150: Reporters, editors, copyeditors, designers, community managers, sales representatives
• Sports Weekly: Continue to publish and grow the sports-focused weekly paper that may likely sell well and drive longer-form sports reporting. If sensible, perhaps fold this and a broader feature push into a more robust Sunday paper product.
  Staff of 20: Reporters, columnists, editors, copyeditors, designers, community managers, sales representatives
• Incubator: Sure, they’ve launched it, so they should bolster their efforts to house and receive some revenue back from mentoring and partnering with media innovation startups.
  Staff of 5:
• Administration: managing the actual company, its building and staff.
  Staff of 20: administration, security, leadership, accounting, HR,

Of course, this would require significant bloodletting, major union concessions and reorganization, forced buyouts of older staff who have not evolved, a completely new vision of what its content looks like, who its partners are and what groups do what. In short, they are all things that won’t happen.

In 1947, a staff strike crippled a daily paper here called the Record and forced its sale. It wasn’t the first time in the long history of daily newspapers in Philadelphia. And I would expect it to happen again before something so dramatic were to happen today.

I am not predicting the collapse of the Inquirer. That would still surprise me. I am not predicting that the paper will become completely irrelevant. That would surprise me too.

If nothing bold happens, though, I do predict a slow, sad, muffled trend downward in impact, something most would argue has been happening for 20 years.

Big stories will still come out. But among all the outlets in the region, more and more of them will from time to time share the lead story of the day.

At a recent event at the NBC affiliate here, I asked a few of their staff members whether they thought the future would be more competitive — because media convergence would put everyone on the same playing field — or less competitive — because everyone will find a niche and largely partner. None had an answer, nor did they appear to have ever thought about the subject.

One can envision a PMN that looks more like a TV affiliate with much more serious reporting and resurgent impact. My fear is that no one involved in the actual ownership negotiation of the company even thinks to do so or has the will to ever make that happen.