Black Media Initiative Bridge Project: Audience Revenue

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Black Media Initiative Bridge Project: Audience Revenue

This free six-month program provides technology and design support for Black publishers looking to launch a subscription, membership or donation campaign.

The program is hosted by the Black Media Initiative, a project of the Center for Community Media housed at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY with support from Upside Analytics, Get Current Studio, News Revenue Hub, Poool & SimpleCirc.

Black media is in a time of transformation. The once-stable business model of print advertising has been upended by the digital advertising boom. Digital advertising rewards the scale of high-traffic websites, making it much more difficult for Black publishers, who overwhelmingly serve local audiences, to thrive. Diversifying the revenue streams while growing their respective audiences will be critical to ensuring that Black media publishers have all the tools needed to flourish and establish sustainable business models.

Advertising will remain an important revenue stream for Black publishers and organizations like the National Newspaper Publisher Association; Black Owned Media Alliance; Black Owned Media Equity and Sustainability Institute; Group Black; and notable figures such as Byron Allen and Roland Martin are helping to get greater access to advertising dollars for Black media. Yet there is still a pressing need for support in terms of diversifying streams of revenue. The Bridge Project hopes to do just that: provide a pathway from a business model relying so heavily on advertising to one that includes digital and print advertising but also subscription, membership, or donation-based models of audience revenue.

This project will support publishers with a high potential for generating that kind of audience revenue as well as launch their own programs within a 10-week period. The Bridge Project will also provide ongoing support throughout the six-month period. The newsrooms will get technical support to add audience revenue modules to their website, analytics tools support to help them understand how to optimize their content to convert more of their audience to financially support them, and consulting to help craft tailored messaging and campaigns that resonate with their audiences. Best of all, this program is free to publishers.

Six newsrooms between January and July 2023 will be included in our inaugural cohort. Applications open Tuesday, Oct. 18 and close Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 at 11:59 pm PT.

1. How do I apply?

You can apply through this link. Please only submit one application per newsroom. Applicants must have the support of their publisher.

2. What commitment do you ask from participants?

We are asking accepted applicants to meet the following commitments:

You agree to work and utilize the revenue technology platform you are paired with
Provide one “team member” who can work with coaches to get up and running in weekly sprints. We estimate that this person will need to commit about 40 hours to the project over the 10-week period, but the commitment has some flexibility depending on your needs.
Willing to share learnings with other publishers

3. What days of the week will class take place?

4. What kind of candidate are you looking for?

We are looking for newsrooms that:

Are Black-owned
Have at least 1,000 monthly active users. We will consider a lower number if there is strong user growth.
Be willing to adopt an audience revenue platform and allow it to run in your website operations
Be willing to utilize Google Analytics for basic analytics (unless a suitable alternative is supplied)
Dedicate one lead person to work with a coach/platform expert to attend all meetings
Be willing to share what they learned with other publishers and successes as a public case study

5. How much does the program cost?

6. What platforms are available in this project?

We have partnered with News Revenue Hub, Poool and SimpleCirc for this program. Please see below for more information about each organization.

News Revenue Hub is a nonprofit that helps news organizations build membership and crowdfunding programs. To do this, they provide strategy and technology to partners – everything from developing messaging to implementing custom technology. They also train partners on industry best practices and provide support along the way.
Poool is the simple, all-in-one Membership & Subscription Suite for digital content producers to convert, manage and retain their members and subscribers.
SimpleCirc helps publishers simplify their subscriber management to save them time & money, and grow their circulations. With SimpleCirc, publishers can take orders online, automate their renewal process, sell back issues and merchandise, and manage their publications with ease.

7. What will my newsroom get out of it?

Participants will:

Have free access to a reader revenue system for six months to test the revenue model
Have support from a consultant to help with implementation over 10 weeks
Receive design and copywriting support for fundraising appeals
Receive Google Analytics support and other coaching
Have the potential to increase their bottom line by tapping into a new revenue stream