Hacks/Hackers #53 – Audience, community & memberships

This month, we once again meet at CORRECTIV to talk about the intersection between technology and journalism. We'll have three short talks and space to discuss the latest tech and journalism topics. This time, we look at how indie media projects can sustain their work through community building and membership models.

SPEAKERS:

Sebastian Esser – Steady
https://steadyhq.com

Membership is a growing trend in international media: Team up with your audience to build a sustainable and long-lasting business model for your independent publication from scratch without big investors or a lot of tech know-how, that's what more and more journalists are doing worldwide. But what exactly is membership? How is it different from subscriptions or donations? What do I need to get started and make it work? How can I work on the value proposition, so my users will start paying?

Sebastian Esser is a journalist and entrepreneur from Berlin. He co-founded several companies, among them the member-funded magazine Krautreporter.de (13,000+ members) and Steady, the membership platform for independent publishers (50,000+ paying members).

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Luise Lange – CORRECTIV
https://correctiv.org

Luise Lange will speak about community engagement at the non-profit newsroom CORRECTIV. For more than five years, they have been working closely with citizens – this is the strength of CORRECTIV's journalism. In her presentation, Luise will explain what's behind the their slogan "for and with society", how they reach people with their message, and how they motivate them to participate in their work – whether with their knowledge or a donation.

Luise Lange has been responsible for community engagement at CORRECTIV since 2016 and will tell us about her work with examples ranging from crowdsourced investigations to reader surveys and more.

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Judith Doleschal – FragDenStaat
https://fragdenstaat.de

FragDenStaat is a platform that enables you to get answers from the government and public sector by making official requests for information. Judith Doleschal joined the growing project last October to focus on community development. She will talk about what they've learned about community engagement when in comes to developing and improving a platform that everyone should be able to use, especially in context of campaigns. Further, Judith will give you insights into the process they are now starting to structure and prioritise their community management efforts.

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Maria Paula Murcia – Mutante
https://www.mutante.org/

Maria is leading Mutante’s membership development which will be launched in March and which is supported by the Membership Puzzle Project at New York University.

Mutante is a media start up established by the journalist and creative director, Juan Camilo Maldonado Tovar & Nicolás Vallejo. They wanted to generate a “new species of conversation”, a model of journalism that could change the way we speak about, understand, and act on the problems of contemporary society.

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Kind regards,
Hacks/Hackers organizing team.