Unable to solve the advertising puzzle, Minneapolis Voices is going quiet for now

When Charlie Rybak co-founded Minneapolis Voices in the organization focused on quality hyperlocal journalism for the city It was also trying to fix a broken system advertising One of the reasons I got into this work is I saw local newspapers dying and I saw all the money that was being spent by advertisers on social media platforms Rybak revealed One hundred dollars spent on Facebook will buy you a couple of views and then that money s gone forever he commented One hundred dollars spent on a local news ad pays for local journalism that can continue to have an impact for a really long time Rybak sees advertising with local news as a kind of digital Buy Local movement that supports the city much like the benefit that comes from shopping locally He hoped Minneapolis businesses and organizations would also see that value But they didn t buy in On May Rybak revealed a reset at Minneapolis Voices and its two free digital-only publications Southwest Voices and Downtown Voices Melody Hoffmann SV s founding editor and Brianna Kelly DV s founding editor were laid off We ll forgo our typical ironclad shield of objectivity and state outright bummer wrote Racket the alternative journalism outlet which is part of an ad selling group with Minneapolis Voices So disappointed to read this I love the hyper-localized stories revealed by Melody Hoffmann reported one Instagram comment on the announcement Minneapolis Voices had subsisted on an annual budget of roughly - working with a stable of freelancers on stories ranging from an expos of a problematic landlord to local vote guides and the revival of local businesses But an especially rough sparse months of advertising amid economic uncertainty left the organization unable to pay Hoffmann and Kelly Even before this we were never really more than a month away from running out of cash Rybak stated Payroll was roughly of the budget Rybak reported very little of which went to him or his co-founder Andrew Haeg In they paid themselves each then stopped taking any salary while continuing to work part-time Haeg declined to speak with MinnPost Rybak a long-time digital media and improvement strategist works full-time as the chief operating officer at Cooperative Power Futures which builds region solar projects He is perhaps best known as the son of former Minneapolis Mayor R T Rybak who was a journalist and publisher before entering politics For weeks the two full-time editors knew they didn t have much time left Rybak was transparent about the organization s financial hardship We really demanded to stay until the bitter end Hoffmann stated I loved my job I commented that all the time loved my job Announced Kelly We hoped we had a couple more weeks but it ended up that we needed to halt the presses right now The now-former editors were not part of the decision making for the reset Rybak hopes Minneapolis Voices will continue in certain form A limited options are in the works from being acquired by another media company to becoming a nonprofit You have not heard the last from us and I m hoping that we re able to be back up on our feet as soon as attainable he revealed In the meantime Minneapolis Voices will keep sending newsletters and updating websites with the help of freelancers A business model stretched thin Nowadays several journalism startups are nonprofits But for Rybak and Haeg that felt like the wrong model to start with Nonprofits need a board which can take time and effort to set up And Rybak didn t think he or Haeg could get enough philanthropic patronage to launch as a nonprofit Nonprofit status is also no guarantee of success So instead they set up Minneapolis Voices as a for-profit limited liability company The LLC is fiscally sponsored by the nonprofit Pillsbury United Communities which processed grants benefits and payroll Our original plan was start with grant funding to help us get off the ground and then hopefully begin to replace that grant funding with revenue Rybak declared The intent was to make money from advertising membership merchandise and events Over the years came a reality check Minneapolis Voices didn t have the threshold for merchandise and events And philanthropic funding rather than being a one-time boost needed to be a long-term assistance system if the organization desired to grow But continued grant funding has been hard to sustain We re not a startup and we re not a totally evolved organization Rybak explained People are less interested in making grants to that Meanwhile membership was profitable but felt like a finite reservoir Our conversion rate for unpaid subscribers to paid members was extremely high for the industry Hoffmann noted of the Southwest Voices newsletter audience So for us to do membership drives we were already kind of at the high end of like well how numerous more members can we get Both Rybak and Hoffmann didn t want to constantly ask their audience for money something community media relies on They may have lost out on particular funding but not enough to make a difference Hoffmann thinks I don t know if that would have made a huge difference because we re not talking about Oh we just needed a couple of extra hundred dollars a month she announced We needed an extra tens of thousands of dollars a month Likewise Rybak didn t see much room for dire help-us-or-we-die fundraising campaigns Minneapolis Voices successfully made that pitch last summer he announced but I think you get to basically go to people and say We re in real trouble right now once before it kind of becomes dishonest Swings misses and advertising Advertising was the big revenue bet that never worked We have a huge newsletter open rate We have the preponderance loyal readership We know exactly who our readers are Hoffmann explained of Southwest Voices We struggled so much to get advertising and it baffled us she commented It was frustrating to watch because I had no control over it and it was part of my livelihood Pursuit of advertising led in part to the launch of Downtown Voices in Serious reporting on the struggling city center the thinking goes should have been an advertising gold mine Related If downtown Minneapolis is dead why is it getting a new district news outlet Instead launching Downtown Voices was one of several decisions that while in line with the mission of Minneapolis Voices may have exceeded the organization s people and revenue ceiling The biggest miscalculation that we made was I really really thought more downtown Minneapolis advertisers would jump on this and would really see the value in there being a publication serving downtown Minneapolis specifically Rybak reported Adding Brianna Kelly as the full-time editor of DV strained the budget an expense that might have balanced out with more advertising revenue Kelly was also surprised Rybak s bet didn t pay off She too saw organizations pour money into social media while DV s advertising activity stayed anemic A lot of people saw the value in Downtown Voices but not enough to really put their money where their mouth is Kelly commented That s kind of the biggest bummer Other efforts might also have been an overreach A Minneapolis Populace Schools parent writing about the district inspired the launch of Minneapolis Schools Voices a grant-supported publication That added way too much to our plates Hoffmann announced But at the same time it was a wonderful contribution to the group and exactly what our readership was asking for Minneapolis Schools Voices hasn t published since late Rybak disclosed the grant wasn t enough to sustain the project Was that mission creep Maybe he revealed It s a super fair question to ask but the alternative is a lot of that stuff would have gone totally uncovered if we hadn t jumped in Various pain points were more mundane but also part of the burnout that comes with a small club doing multiple things Hoffmann and Kelly were for the majority part one-woman shows tackling reporting editing working with freelancers site management newsletter production and in a crossover with advertising woes social media After all the reason so a large number of businesses and organizations spend their advertising dollars on social media instead of local news is because that s where audiences are Minneapolis Voices had a similar dilemma On my preponderance cynical days I d be like Why am I producing stuff for Instagram when I could be producing stuff for my own website Hoffmann disclosed We would have to make those choices and it s not a fun one I don t know what the answer is Lessons and loss Ultimately an unsustainable business model means less journalism in a city the Minneapolis Voices unit saw as already grossly underserved Yes there are a lot of news outlets in the Twin Cities But a great number of have a regional focus and nobody does what I call the vegetables of reporting Hoffmann commented What happened at the City Council What happened at the park board What happened at the county board of commissioners Because that s the stuff that all of a sudden you wake up one day and your streets are under construction and you re like why she declared Oh yeah because the city passed an ordinance and nobody s covering that Rybak sees Minneapolis as a victim of a larger problem in journalism Over the past years roughly newspapers have closed in the United States and journalism jobs have vanished Although it is now owned by billionaire Minnesotan Glen Taylor the Minnesota Star Tribune s newsroom for example is smaller this day than it was in That means far less reporting on key issues now taking another hit with the temporary Rybak hopes diminishing of Minneapolis Voices But Rybak is determined to continue experimenting with methods to sustain local journalism interwoven with several constituents calls to action We need more people throwing spaghetti at the wall he commented If you are not a person who wants to go out and try stuff please put your money into local media and please to all the advertisers out there spend your money locally in the same way that you want your customers to spend their money locally But even amid the disappointment of the Minneapolis Voices reset there s also much to take away from the success it had over the past minimal years Kelly saw her job at Downtown Voices as an affirmation of why journalism really matters I was writing and reporting for people who authentically care about downtown and want to see it thrive she announced As a journalist you hope that you can make a difference by informing people And I think that goal is a lot more attainable or visceral in this job So for that I love hyperlocal news Southwest Voices editor Melody Hoffmann explained she kept these Post-it notes on her computer monitor as she defined her news site s mission Credit Provided by Melody Hoffman Soutwest Voices For Hoffmann running Southwest Voices was a way to follow in the footsteps of her idol Mister Rogers and his passion for caring about neighbors It was such an honor to talk with people that are also excited about the city or not excited about the city and want to make the city a better place she reported But maybe paradoxically becoming a beloved local news source also meant learning to have a clear sense of boundaries Is this a priority for a hyper local pub reads a Post-it note on her monitor written in red ink When the locality starts to trust you they throw you a lot of stuff and you have to know when to say No Hoffmann declared Editor s note MinnPost collaborated with Minneapolis Voices on city vote coverage in You can read that coverage here The post Unable to solve the advertising puzzle Minneapolis Voices is going quiet for now appeared first on MinnPost