{"id":215284,"date":"2021-08-18T19:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-08-18T23:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/?p=215284"},"modified":"2021-10-29T12:49:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T16:49:02","slug":"news-guest-madeleine-bair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/news-guest-madeleine-bair\/","title":{"rendered":"What happens to that reader revenue strategy when your readers can\u2019t spare it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At first glance, Alameda County, California, is not a \u201cnews desert\u201d \u2014 not with its deep bench of daily<\/a> and weekly newspapers<\/a> and promising digital startups<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But like other market failures<\/a>, news deserts rarely fall neatly along county lines, despite the best efforts to map them that way<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Alameda County, for example, the news ecosystem for middle- and upper-class tech workers who can afford $14\/month subscriptions<\/a> exists side by side with a deepening news desert for low-income residents, especially those who don\u2019t speak English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why I wanted to learn more about the business model for <\/strong>El T\u00edmpano<\/strong><\/a>, a civic media organization that serves the Latino and Mayan immigrant communities in Oakland. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in 2018, El T\u00edmpano always faced an uphill climb to become financially sustainable, because its primary audience isn\u2019t broad enough to attract major advertisers or affluent enough to support a reader revenue strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even many philanthropic funders balked at El T\u00edmpano\u2019s audience profile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFunders have told me that we can\u2019t scale, that we\u2019re too small, and that journalism for low-income immigrants doesn\u2019t make an impact,\u201d El T\u00edmpano <\/strong>founder Madeleine Bair says. \u201cTo find solutions, I realized I had to look beyond philanthropy and beyond reader revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One promising solution is El T\u00edmpano\u2019s fast-growing revenue stream around civic partnerships, which first emerged as an opportunity during the 2020 U.S. Census count. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With hundreds of Oakland immigrants subscribed and actively engaging with its SMS reporting platform, El T\u00edmpano won a contract to help Census officials reach and engage a segment of the community that they\u2019d historically struggled to count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paid partnership helped ensure that \u201chard-to-reach\u201d immigrant communities in Oakland were informed about the census, why it matters, and how to be counted \u2014 and it soon led to more partnership opportunities, including a contract with the local health department to distribute information about COVID-19 safety and vaccine access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt turns out that the public health department has funding that they want to invest to reach the communities that we\u2019re reaching,\u201d Madeleine says. \u201cTo not forge a relationship would be to leave money on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our latest News Guest<\/a> episode, Madeleine explains how she\u2019s turned civic partnerships into one of El T\u00edmpano\u2019s biggest and fastest-growing revenue streams <\/strong>\u2014 and how she plans to build on this momentum even once the COVID-19 pandemic is over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n