Use this form to send "The Forum The Philbrick James Forum" to a friend.

Your E-mail:

Your Name:

To:

Subject:

Message:
You've been sent a story from New Voices (http://www.j-newvoices.org/): The Forum The Philbrick James Forum http://www.j-newvoices.org/66/ A small-town public library will open a hyperlocal news site to collect citizens' writing and photos, showcasing the best in a quarterly print magazine. CONTACT INFO Philbrick James Forum 52 Stage Rd. Deerfield, NH 03037 (603) 463-9990 E-mail Web site To create a Web site to report on local news and activities, exchange opinions and showcase news, fiction, poetry, cartoons and opinion pieces from the 4,000 residents of this growing rural community. A quarterly newspaper will cover seasonal topics, including local elections and school issues, and highlight the best contributions posted to the Web site. The Forum was initially proposed and launched under the auspices of the Friends of the Deerfield (Philbrick James) Library, but has since received its own 501(c)3 standing. Check back for future news and updates. Jump to progress reports: • Final Report: October 2007 • May 2006 • February 2006 • November 2005 • August 2005   Success Breeds Competition for The ForumFinal Report: October 2007 The Forum has reached a level of success even its founders did not anticipate.  Let the numbers speak:  In the past year alone, its second in operation, bylined contributors have nearly tripled to 211 people. The Forum now averages 37 original articles weekly. And readership has grown significantly, from 200,000 hits in May 2006 to 650,000 hits in May 2007. The Forum has done more than just create a buzz. Citizens in the four New Hampshire communities it covers are highly engaged, submitting photos and articles, opinions, comments and events listings – and news tips. Local government agencies are asking The Forum to post information and submitting agendas and minutes of meetings for publication. When a local town administrator was terminated, “We were able to break the story ... prior to the dailies,” said Managing Editor Maureen Mann.  In the spring of 2007, the Board of Selectmen from the Town of Deerfield officially thanked The Forum for being a critical link for residents during a storm in April, when the town’s official Web site was down. Contributor Karen Davidson has covered Nottingham for the past year. “When I meet people and tell them I am a volunteer for The Forum, I get very positive feedback. ‘Great paper, we really need The Forum in Nottingham’ are just some of the comments I hear over and over again.” Karen says being a citizen reporter has been good for her, too. “I probably would not have done this myself if I hadn’t become disabled and lost my job. Writing, communicating with others, has kept my work skills up to par, but it has also given me a way to be social without going to work. [It] gives me a feeling of purpose.” In the past year, The Forum has made strides toward professionalism. They’ve begun to recruit new members to its Board of Directors, to raise credibility in the community and allow the Board to focus on long-range planning instead of the everyday running of the paper. The Forum has acquired errors and omissions and directors liability insurance. While two part-time editors are paid modest monthly stipends, if grant funding comes through, they hope to create two paid positions:  a manager and office support person. Mann says proudly, “We’re at the point that The Forum is sustainable even if the founding group were to take a less active role.” Mann says that perhaps the best evidence of The Forum’s acceptance as the news source for its community is the arrival of competition. “Two years ago there was no regular coverage of our readership area; we … sought to provide it ourselves. Today, the Union Leader publishes ‘Route 101 East’ covering Candia and Deerfield twice per week … and The Concord Monitor and Foster’s (the sea coast newspaper) have both increased their coverage of the area.” “We are flattered by the fact that many of their ‘features’ are enhanced items previously published in The Forum,” she said. The Forum didn’t seek ad revenue until early 2006. By early 2007, the sales manager continued to generate ad revenue for the online edition while attracting enough advertising to cover two-thirds of the $2,000 cost of each print edition. The print edition is mailed to 7,300 homes and businesses in the four-town area about three to four times a year. It’s expensive, says Mann, but “in our minds, it is our obligation to those residents who do not have ready access to the online edition – no matter how many times we remind them to visit their public library.” Other changes on the horizon:  The Forum will soon allow residents to post events and classified ads independently. They plan to give citizen comments higher visibility. The site has been experimenting with slide shows and short videos and plans to offer training to citizens to use these technologies. They are planning for two paid positions:  a manager and an office support person, depending on grant funding. Says Mann, “When doing this every day, it is easy to forget everything but the routine. When we do take the time to assess what we have accomplished, we are amazed.  It takes time and effort, and can be very stressful, but it is now a functioning volunteer organization.” And one that provides a model for communities around the country. The Forum has mentored many other start-ups. Mann says she gets at least one call a month from someone hoping to launch a similar citizen media venture, asking for guidance. New Hampshire Forum’s Momentum BuildsMay 2006 Through its first nine months, The Forum in Deerfield, N.H., has grown to 72 bylined contributors from 10, raised $10,900 in advertising and other support, published two print editions, and snared about 3,500 unique visitors per month from a population of only 16,000 – and only half of those have Internet access. “We are serving an unserved need,” said editor Maureen Mann. “Every day one of us is told how important The Forum has become to the community.” When it launched on Aug. 19, 2005, The Forum only had 10 writers from its initial – and unwavering – corps of 15 volunteers. Now, of its 72 writers, 27 have contributed at least three articles, which helps to provide a dependable base of regular contributors, Mann said. To attract more contributors, Arts Editor Mel Graykin has been holding bi-weekly creative writing classes at the Deerfield Public Library, which have prompted several literary contributions to the site. “We have become a venue for local artists and writers of all ages and the Arts section has a strong following,” Mann said. More training programs for potential reporters are in the works and The Forum hopes to attract university interns this fall. Eventually, The Forum hopes to recruit some paid employees, particularly a regular sports and outdoors reporter, and pay a stipend to volunteers who are working more than 100 hours a year. Mann said that would give The Forum more power to assign coverage and set requirements. First, though, the project wants to secure errors and omissions insurance and some liability coverage. The Forum’s part-time advertising sale person, who works solely on commission, has sold $7,791 in ads. The town’s widely known Deerfield Fair has ponied up a $2,500 grant. Other funds have come from member dues ($25 per year) and other donations. And the project is planning to pursue further grant funding. By mid-May, The Forum will use Pay-Pal to accept donations, as well as advertising and classified payments. The Forum held its first Open House on May 16, inviting advertisers, readers and residents for an inside look at the publication. The Forum’s Web site has consistently attracted more than 20,000 total hits a month with an average of 3,485 unique visitors. Most popular are the home page, local town news and letters and opinions. “Readers regularly turn to us for reports of meetings and opinions on local issues’” Mann said. “We are the only source of information on the most controversial local issues: growth, land conservation, and maintaining ‘rural character.’” To drive traffic, the site recently added an RSS feed of the front page so readers can be automatically updated as new stories are posted. The Forum has also attracted community attention through its participation with the Candia Boy Scouts, the Deerfield school fundraiser and the police department “barn raising.” Also, The Forum has secured a non-profit bulk mail permit that will reduce mailing costs and help its print edition to reach “every home in our four-town area.” The third print edition is due out in June. The Forum Prints Municipal Election EditionFebruary 2006 The Forum published its municipal election print edition in March, its second print publication and a major milestone for the small-town New Hampshire publication that gets its content from volunteer contributors. “This topic is one of the major reasons we wanted a newspaper,” said editor Maureen Mann. With no regular local print edition offering coverage specific to the towns of Deerfield, Candia, Northwood and Nottingham, The Forum was the sole source for comprehensive coverage of town elections. “We got a lot of positive response – from readers, town officials, and candidates – and circulation jumped about 400 unique hits compared to previous weeks as we were able to get results posted overnight, even faster than the town web sites,” Mann said. “Deerfield town offices even referred callers to our site.” Unique hits have regularly been over 1,000 per week since the elections. A third print edition is planned for June. “They usually give us a boost [in Web traffic],” Mann said. The forum is also trying to find a way to determine how many people in the Forum’s coverage area have computers to read its online edition. As the publication settles into a routine, its staff has found one strategy to be most successful in soliciting citizen submissions: “harassment,” said Mann. “If someone mentions almost any topic, we ask them to write an article about it.” As a result, more citizens have submitted content to the site. Still, most of the content is provided by a core group of dedicated volunteers, Mann. Members of municipal boards and local organizations make up some of the new contributors, submitting notices and press releases and writing articles on local issues. Mann said the site has also been receiving more submissions of photography, poetry and short fiction. The Forum has also added several regular columns, including ”Looking Up!,” a monthly astronomy column written by Mal Cameron, a Deerfield resident who is the education specialist for the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, N.H., Candia resident Kathleen Weber is writing a craft column. A long series on letters and diaries written by a current resident’s grandparent during the Civil War is also planned. To help offset the cost of publishing, The Forum hired an advertising representative who is paid on commission and began actively seeking advertisements in October. As of Jan. 31, The Forum had raised $3,764 through advertising. The Forum is raising funds in other ways, as well: The Deerfield Fair Association donated $2,500 to The Forum in response to its coverage of the 2005 Deerfield Fair. The University System of New Hampshire sponsored The Forum, giving the organization $100 and access to articles through the UNH Cooperative Extension, which provides research-based education and information. Member dues totaled $350. Unsolicited donors gave a total of $40. Deerfield Forum Launches a Print EditionNovember 2005 By mid-December, just four months after the Aug. 19 launch of its Web site, The Forum was selling its first, limited-run print edition for Deerfield, N.H., residents who do not have computers or Internet access – just $2 an issue and an “ideal stocking stuffer,” pronounced an online item. “It was clear from early feedback that we would have to deal with making articles available to those without computer access,” said editor Maureen Mann. “…Some people need to have something in their hands and they have made their criticism of an online-only newspaper clear.” It was another sign of considerable momentum in this volunteer effort. To date, Forum volunteers have: Generated extraordinary coverage of Deerfield’s famous four-day fair – 31 stories, 67 photos and 16 contest results.  The event, which ran from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 this year, draws many from around New England. Launched a major series on the locally charged issues of growth, open space, the tax rate, school overcrowding, community services and the area’s rural character. Created a “What’s New” page to help people navigate more quickly to the latest postings. Hired an advertising manager who works on commission and has developed a sales plan, literature and a rate chart, resulting in new advertising on the site. Tracked a doubling of the number of individuals logging on every month. Developed editorial policies for posting headlines, stories and photos. Received their nonprofit status so they can now accept tax-deductible donations. The Philbrick James Forum is a group of about 15 core volunteers that have set themselves up as sort of a cooperative, paying $25 to join and agreeing to volunteer 100 hours of work a year. The site, forumhome.org, marketed its launch at the Aug. 20 Deerfield Old Home Days with flyers, a float in the parade, and an ad in the school’s Communicator. Coverage in the Union Leader, the Concord Monitor and on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer have helped to spread the word. WHAT WE USE: Bulletlink content management system. By mid-September, “ideas for content, which we had thought would be hard to find, were appearing faster than we could handle them,” Mann said. But a major problem continues to be finding enough volunteers to deal with the information. Plans to formally expand coverage to nearby Candia, Northwood and Nottingham (population, 16,200 including Deerfield) are being paced until the group can recruit additional staffers. Meanwhile, articles about those areas are being posted as they become available. Coverage of the Deerfield Fair — everything from logrolling to axe throws, to sheep dog demonstrations — was so plentiful that the group is hoping the Fair will become a sponsor of the site. Forum volunteers are still tweaking editorial policies, troubleshooting software, cross-training volunteers in production skills, and trying to figure out how to communicate faster with one another, One headache: Their Bulletlink content management system lets people post an opinion without an accompanying name or e-mail address in violation of The Forum’s policies. Plans are afoot to recruit other contributors, including a high school reporter, and to work on fund raising to help sustain their efforts. Still, says Mann, “We have grown from a group of individuals into a capable and cooperative staff.” The Forum Launches with Plans for ExpansionAugust 2005 UPDATE:The Forum has added sections for Candia, Northwood and Nottingham, and is soliciting volunteers for all towns. Candia and Northwood both have articles posted, far ahead of their previous goal of having content by early 2006. The Forum, the new online newspaper for Deerfield, N.H., and surrounding towns launched in late August after a whirlwind four months of activity and quickly had 6,500 visitors. Philbrick James Forum volunteers designed the Web site, selected a name that would allow them to expand by early 2006 into three surrounding communities, recruited three columnists and several pro bono advisers, developed editorial policies and advertising fundraising plans, and applied for and received their own 501(c)3 nonprofit designation. “We are exhausted and exhilarated,” said editor Maureen Mann on the eve of the August 20 launch of the inaugural edition. The Forum’s Pledge To report the news with accuracy and objectivity, and treat people with respect. To provide content to help citizens make informed decisions about local issues. To facilitate community debate. To furnish an opportunity for creative expression. To correct our errors in a timely manner. An ad in the school newsletter generated a substantial amount of interest, including an invitation from the Board of Selectmen to have the group appear and explain the project.  A local businessman is helping the group develop a plan to recruit sponsors and advertisers.  Classified ads can be purchased online for $10 for the first 25 words.  And plans have been made for the group’s first fundraiser early next year.  A popular local group, the Coffeehouse Band, has offered to do a benefit concert for The Forum. For its launch, The Forum provided free ads for local businesses who donated support, including the pizza shop that donated a gift certificate to the winner of a contest for naming the site. The Franklin Pierce School of Law has been providing free legal advice, which helped The Forum volunteers apply for nonprofit status and spin off from the local library, which had agreed to be the group’s initial sponsor. While the site’s content is still being developed, the group has recruited a potential restaurant reviewer, a quilt columnist and a sports reporter and general advisor.  The site invites coverage not only of local headlines, but also police logs, the “Y” Generation, arts and crafts, obits, profiles, sports, gardening and entertainment. There is also a “Fun Page.” The Forum’s volunteers have laid out plans for also providing news coverage for Candia, Northwood and Nottingham. While some Candia coverage has been developed, content for the other two towns is slated for early 2006. Plans for expanding coverage influenced the choice of The Forum name. “We wished to avoid the name of our specific town in order to appeal to a regional community,” Mann said. The ad in the back-to-school newsletter will solicit more volunteers and contributors.