We are pioneering a new model
for community-energizing journalism.   

Community newspapers are shriveling, and the trustworthy news coverage needed for civic and economic health is shriveling with them.  Because papers are dying far faster than digital news sites are being born, a crucial pillar of our beleaguered democracy is crumbling. 

It gets worse:  Politically deceptive “pink slime” websites have rushed into this news vacuum — and have come to outnumber legitimate online news efforts.  Now, leading up to the midterm elections in November, swarms of slick AI disinformation bots are flooding social media.  These developments crank up the volume on democracy’s cry of distress for trustworthy new models for community journalism that can thrive and nourish democracy in our digital future.

The Banyan Project is a robust response to this cry.

Our mission is to help seed independent news cooperatives in underserved communities, then provide support to help them succeed.  Success means not only restoring lost news coverage but also using news to nourish civic engagement and leverage the web’s inherent interactivity to inspire greater community engagement than analog-era news models ever could, even digital versions. 

Relevant, Respectful and Trustworthy

So Banyan set out strategically to find a new model that can sustain itself financially in the Digital Age and fulfill three goals we identified as powerful tools for rejuvenating democracy:

• Deliver trustworthy and timely news coverage under professional editorial leadership.

   

• Stimulate and facilitate exceptional levels of civic engagement, community spirit and people helping one another.

• Prove to be easily replicable, community by community and coast to coast.

Our first — and most important — goal is trustworthiness.  In this era of disinformation, deception and manipulation, poll after poll shows distrust of almost all institutions to be rampant and getting worse.  But other research shows that the public trusts cooperatives — credit unions and food co-ops are most widely known — far more than other businesses.

So this is Banyan’s foundational value proposition:  Readers will experience Banyan-model news sites as relevant to their lives, respectful of them as people, and worthy of their trust.

We don’t just monetize news, like standard digital news sites.  The Banyan model will be a community institution that delivers its valuable news for all to read free — and present it in a distinctive digital town square that’s built into its publishing platform. The platform offers an array of ways to nourish civic engagement, inviting co-op members to 1) be a voice in their community, 2) like Wikipedia, take .

Most important, we understand that all economics are driven by desire for things that are both valuable and scarce.  So Banyan monetizes trustworthiness and the civic and economic health of people’s communities.        

Relevant, Respectful and Trustworthy

The digital model we’ve devised is the first to differ fundamentally from adaptations of old analog approaches, 1) the commercial print model for selling news and advertising that, after collapsing in print, is succeeding only spottily the web, or 2) the PBS/NPR nonprofit model that is showing significant success at the national and state level. But neither analog adaptation has had much success at the community level — nearly 3,500 community weeklies have failed since 2005, mostly in rural areas, and only 695 digital sites of all kinds exist now, 90 percent in affluent metro areas.

Instead, we offer a civic institution built on the robust foundation of consumer co-ops, with reader-members owning the source of their community’s news the way shoppers own food co-ops and depositors own credit unions.  By law, the members of all co-ops elect their boards by one-member/one-vote democracy.  

What makes Banyan’s model genuinely new? First, its pioneering approach to deep reader engagement and, second, co-ops’ centuries of success in monetizing whatever motivates each co-op’s membership.  What motivates Banyan-model news co-op members?  Their caring for their community — its civic and economic health.  This, not just news, is what we monetize.

Vital Grassroots Community Institution

As Banyan has designed it, the news co-op is not just a news site but rather a vital grassroots community institution that makes its news coverage free for all in the community to read.

The co-op’s heart is a lively digital public square where news coverage inspires and nourishes conversations. This amplifies the journalism’s value and, because parts of the square are open only to members, it helps attracts a significant fraction of readers to enroll; the more that people care about their community’s health, the likelier they are to become paying members.

The square is built into Banyan’s publishing platform and offers easy-to-use digital tools that Banyan has created to invite people to come together to explore issues, organize for constructive community change, and find ways to help one another. Each co-op can invent ways to use the digital square to meet other community needs — might some find ways to use the Banyan model’s digital heart to start bringing their divided communities back together?  Banyan has taken pains to ensure a trustworthy digital space through a sophisticated digital environment, membership agreement, and governance structure enshrined in strong bylaws. 

The platform also invites members to offer feedback and news coverage ideas, helping the editors make coverage decisions from the bottom up, not just from the experts down. Members are also welcome to take part in crowdsourcing of reporting projects.  All this’ volunteer energy can significantly enrich news coverage — it’s the same kind of civic energy the web can unleash to fuel Wikipedia and much open-source software, only on a community scale. 

Deep Engagement Leads to a Virtuous Circle

This depth of engagement sets Banyan apart from current local news models, which work primarily to create relationships between readers and their sites, with donations the goal. Banyan’s co-op model creates relationships among a community’s people as well, with civic vitality the goal. This richer engagement strengthens civic health and creates far greater value to attract people with civic hope to sign up as paid and voting co-op members.

A classic virtuous circle is the logical result: The more a news co-op engages people in building hope for community advancement, the more paying members it should attract; the more paying members it retains, the more members should be inspired to choose premium fee options at renewal time.

The more revenue a co-op thus generates, the more staff it can hire, the more impactful its journalism can be, and the more its community should advance — which should generate still more hope and attract still more paying members.

Our model has attracted interest from people in more than 60 communities from coast to coast and we have drafted specific approaches for the particular needs of small cities or large suburbs, for clusters of small rural towns, and for the Black communities of big cities.  If you are interested in exploring a Banyan-model news co-op where you live, check out this page.

Fairness Baked into Co-op Structure

In the spirit of democracy, each independent news co-op’s editors will aim news coverage to serve the broad public of their community, taking care to meet the information needs of the less-than-affluent everyday citizens we call the Banyan public, not just the upscale people newspapers, public broadcasters, and current digital sites aim to cultivate.  

To this end, Banyan’s model offers not only standard and budget membership fees but also free scholarship-memberships to people who receive means-tested benefits such as food stamps; Banyan’s self-sustaining revenue structure takes this into account.  And no matter who the member is, the one-member/one-vote governance that’s central to co-ops bespeaks equality.  

The model’s grassroots nature and invitation to engagement through the digital public square opens the door wide to the diversity of each co-op’s community.  And the digital public square invites all members to engage. 

Banyan support for new news co-ops will include a comprehensive guide for organizing a co-op, templates for business planning, and help with plans for enrolling founding members.

In short, independent news co-ops that use Banyan’s model will be democracy-strengthening community institutions of, by and for their communities.  In you’re intrigued, learn more on our Starting a News Cooperative page. 

— Tom Stites