Local Community Based Media
Summary - We're after £10K+ to help us build a pot of money to buy vitally needed equipment and some infrastructure for our new projects. We've tried traditional funding methods and have hit brick walls along the way. We need a little help from our followers in order to raise enough money so we can employ some key players to help us grow. Please donate £1 or whatever you can afford in order to help us build a truly local and INDEPENDENT media outlet for the people of the fylde coast.
Here's our plea in full
We've been building the BPL Bible into an independent alternative local media outlet for the past 4 years and have been doing very well for the resources we have available and the volunteers that help us. We're currently a volunteer only organisation committed to spreading good news and positivity about Blackpool. Over the past years we have reported on local issues - shared local funny stories and quirks - shared local appeals from the community and the police and we've helped to resolve more than a number of local crimes or incidents down to the power of our local readers/audience. A few of our stories have made the national news (with no credit we might add)
With news that our local paper which has been on the decline for a few years has been put into recievership by liquidators - has seen an increase of click-bait style articles and huge advertising and marketing presence on their site frustrating most if not ALL the former gazette readers we have spoken to - this brings them in line with the new media brands such as lad bible etc which have proved popular (we styled our name based on theirs but added the "good word" angle to set our idea in stone.. We wanted to see a change for good so we curated a small group of citizen journalists who could write in their spare time and a few photographers who had an interest in the local area already.
We want to create jobs for people to be come the local news team with this funding - hired by merit initially on a story by story basis until we have reached a point of self sustainability through advertising partnerships and endorsements by smaller local businesses. Due to a strategic alliance (to be announced next month) - we will soon again have a small premises in the heart of Blackpool in which we can operate our news/media outlet AND help to make a direct difference to our community.
In order to grow this brand we need financing. Given a proper budget to do the job - we could be out-performing anything from the main stream media - but we simply can't make that leap without help with the money. We're essentially a husband and wife team with one full time stay at home parent for at least the next year and building a media business just isn't in our budget at the moment.
Believe it or not - the banks aren't interested in the news - especially when it comes to starting up in news. We've been down that route for too long now hitting brick wall after brick wall. We have found some potential funding streams which have been applied for or are in the process of applying for - but most of which don't allow for any form of monetization which is key in our minds in order to grow into a true multi-media platform that we believe we can deliver.
We've been networking for the past 4 years - we have a plan to visit every business on the Fylde coast and to offer them into our local's discount card scheme - we have so many avenues which we can help local businesses get the word out about what they are doing without having to pay the exorbitant costs of advertising with "main stream" advertisers. We can achieve similar results online with a much smaller budget and we want to offer that as a service to small local businesses who need the most help.