Yes, that is George Michael. There are three clear steps to increase the number of news sources to the level that, say, surrounded Singer George Michael in May 1985 when this photo was taken by Ann Clifford for Life magazine.
To increase the number of news sources in a community one needs to do two things: (1) grow audience and/or (2) grow revenue.
When I am unsure about something, I tend to over-indulge in the research.
So, when my two colleagues and I decided that, despite our size, we thought it was worth the cost of hiring a payroll services company to withhold taxes for Technically Media from the very start, I knew I’d be indulging.
In the end, we went with a Center City Philadelphia representative from payroll services giant Paychex.
Let me tell you a bit about the process, in case you have a small business that might want to outsource that work as we have.
A friend mentioned to me that, in the end, he’d rather live his life being underwhelmed, rather than always feeling overwhelmed.
For him, he says he enjoys his life best when he avoids stress and appreciates simple pleasures. For me, he said, I’d rather take on some stress to accomplish something I believe has impact.
Which makes sense: humans aren’t particularly good at striking balance, so we move to one extreme or the other. So which would you rather?: to be underwhelmed or overwhelmed.
As in most cases, there’s value in both. It’s just important to know which you’d rather, so as not to find yourself in a life short of your goals.
At the beginning of December, I left another role and promised greater details on what I would doing. Here’s a start.
In the past few weeks, I’ve chosen a payroll services company, applied for tax status, requested a business operating license, closed an existing account and otherwise finalized the incorporation of a new business, of which I am now a full-time employee, answering early a resolution of mine.
Technically Media Inc. is a media services consultancy with three founders: Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and myself.
And, while I could get you lost in the details, all you really need to know that at its simplest form, we build audiences online.
Early last month, a contributor to the Business Insider dropped the Technically Phillly name and some other references to the Philadelphia online indie media scene:
Hyper-local advertising and content. Speaking of my home base of Philadelphia, the hyper-local eco-system here features sites of every make and model. Examples: PhillySportsDaily.com leaves local sports radio 610WIP.com & 950TheFan in the dust with its 24/7 online sports coverage & analysis. Gawker-influenced; Philebrity.com, probably assisted in the decline of our once great alt-weekly: City Paper. Smart and dominant technology coverage of ‘Philacon Valley’ by the young team at TechnicallyPhilly.com certainly must embarrass the top brass at the legendary Philadelphia Business Journal. And if you taste-test the foodie editorial of JerseyBites.com, it’s easy to imagine this content eventually being licensed or sold to The Food Network or Fodors. MORE
It’s clearly something about which I am passionate and devoted. It’s also something I put a lot of thought into. This weekend, I found myself returning to a thought process of the past, just free associating everything I would invest in if money was no object toward growing Philadelphia journalism.
Of course, money is a big object, but the brainstorm can help. I share my thoughts below and would love to hear what I am missing or what I seem to be paying too much attention to.
Image of Old City Philadelphia cobblestone courtesy of Flickr user IceNineJon.
In the future, this project leads to:
Open source platform for other regionally-grouped niche sites to come together.
Community-edited profiles of local focus and meaning (i.e. city government lobbyists, community associations presidents and other leaders who might otherwise remain anonymous)
A cross-platform tool that can go beyond WordPress and work with meta data from other CMS.
Membership model based on support of an entire local news collaborative network.
Ad network integration, further connecting disparate niche sites
This will connect and encourage collaboration between other and future content providers in Philadelphia.
Niche news sites need to be brought together to strengthen the future of journalism.
We took time to learn that our News Inkubator proposal was too broad and focused on trying to find smaller, more actionable steps, particularly ones that could work with other larger investment.
In doing so, we’re introducing Cobblestone, a proposed tagging WordPress plugin that will feed a searchable, dynamically updated, mobile-friendly directory platform homepage with content from various partners.
Though we think it has real monetary value — considering it is based on a Technically Philly directory aimed at a membership model — this is a decidedly more editorial-first focus. Get the niche sites together, and we can build revenue together.
Perhaps the first question we expect to be asked: why is this different than Google alerts and RSS feeds?
Cobblestone gives tag-specific and cross-partner content some place to live. Once the alerts of Bill Green or the feeds from each of the partner sites pass in time, they are lost. This creates a true homepage.
We followed it up with advertising packages, which I think are more important once your product is a recognized brand in a community, but a media kit is important still.
After fielding a few questions of late from those interested in what is necessary to get started, I thought I’d answer here.
First, don’t forget: a media kit is meant to quickly, effectively inform and attract interested buyers into a media property, particularly one they may not know well.
Tonight, at the sixth Ignite Philly, a presentation event featuring fast-moving five minute discussions, my two Technically Philly colleagues and I discussed ‘The Power of Working in Threes.’
Find the presentation online here or flip through it below. I’m going to try to wrangle the video.
Early last month, a 
