Our Response:  New Model, New Resources 

 As newspapers wither and die, democracy cries out for journalism to be rescued. Banyan is responding with a robust new model for independent community news that’s strategically designed to thrive in the digital future — and to amplify the impact of its news through a distinctive digital public square that inspires engaging in issues, organizing for constructive community change, helping one another, and addressing community needs.

Democracy’s deep need is new models that deliver on four strategic objectives.  They must 1) provide professionally edited and trustworthy community news coverage;       2) invite and empower exceptional levels of civic engagement, community spirit and people helping one another; 3) sustain themselves financially, and 4) be easily replicable, community by community, coast to coast.

Most digital news efforts to date have taken tactical approaches to strengthening legacy models transferred to the web from PBS and the disappearing age of print; after a decade of effort, alarmingly, newspapers are dying far faster than digital community news efforts on existing models are taking root.

But Banyan has developed a strong new approach that does deliver on all four goals — and we are committed to proactively seeding independent news sites on this model.

What’s most novel about Banyan’s approach is that it’s built on the sturdy and long-established foundation of consumer cooperative ownership, along the model of food co-ops, credit unions and long-established reader-owned co-op newspapers in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Mexico.

In today’s digital journalism culture in the U.S., the Banyan model stands out two ways, by delivering  1) not just news sites but grassroots institutions that meet their community’s needs for original reporting, vetted information and deep community engagement through constructive community conversations of all types, and 2) memberships for readers that start with real ownership, albeit modest; a vote in choosing co-op board members; a system of editorial collaboration that reaches out for members’ suggestions, and much more:  These deep memberships offer way more value than the superficial, PBS-model memberships now offered by digital news sites. 

Major Foundation Stones

Solid revenue: Annual co-op membership fees provide a strong revenue stream to fuel Banyan-model community news co-ops, as they have long fueled the co-op papers in Europe and Mexico.  The fees are an annual all-you-can-eat version of the money that food co-op members spend item by item as they shop for food.  Added to a continuing but modest stream of advertising revenue, plus proceeds from occasional grants and crowdfunding campaigns, the membership fees make it possible to pay the staff and other expenses.  Co-op memberships convey equity and a vote to elect the trustees, which offers a much greater value than “memberships” promoted as another word for people who donate; to make the distinction, we refer to co-op membership as “deep membership.”

Inherent trustworthiness: Co-ops’ customers and member/owners are the same people, which makes co-ops the most trusted form of business ownership.  In this era of fake news, disinformation, and social media manipulation, trust is a scarce resource that attracts readers and inspires them to value co-op membership. So Banyan has designed its model to maximize trust and thus invite freely shared collaboration among readers to amplify the power of a co-op’s journalism, leverage the productivity of a co-op’s staff, and strengthen constructive community engagement of all kinds.

Association synergy:  The Banyan Project itself has a national focus and a simple, proactive mission: to seed independent community news co-ops on the model it has created, then support them to help them succeed. At the heart of these services is a distinctive publishing platform tailored to power the co-op model.  It is also designed to maximize the time local co-op staffs have for covering the news by automating important aspects of cultivation, enrollment and renewal of co-op memberships. The platform stands apart from other sites’ because of its distinctive engagement forums and other tools for inspiring and empowering civic health.

Volunteer energy:  Web-era peer networks have unleashed vast amounts of freely shared collaboration, but only in trustworthy spaces. Think Wikipedia and certain open source software projects, such as Linux. Banyan’s publishing platform is designed to safeguard trustworthiness and encourage similar collaboration in a digital public square by inviting readers into digital forums to engage with other readers to work for constructive community change and to help one another. 

Synthesis of Proven Resources

There is no exotic new invention here. Banyan merely synthesizes disparate but proven resources in the service of community web journalism and community engagement. The synthesis makes it possible for independent news co-ops using Banyan’s model to draw from the sources of revenue listed below, and thus to succeed even in news desert communities that lack the advertising dollars to support dying newspapers or, for that matter, web news sites that rely heavily on advertising.

We chose the consumer cooperative as the bedrock for Banyan’s model not only for its inherent trustworthiness but also for its strength and stability in economic settings too arid to support for-profit models; this has proven true for a long list of industries the world over.

In fact, volunteers rarely come together to shoulder the work of forming a co-op except in response to the market failing to deliver something needed. For example, the number of credit unions exploded during the Great Depression when banks failed and credit dried up.

The Banyan Project is a response to a similar drying-up, that of reliable news and information in an expanding number of communities that are becoming news deserts.

The co-op form figures in all four of the main revenue streams the model draws from:

Annual co-op membership payments. Long a staple of European co-op newspapers, this stream has yet to be tapped in the U.S.

Advertising. To help local advertisers adhere to the news co-op as a community institution, the model includes a special business-sponsor category of co-op membership; for an annual fee these members receive a business directory listing, an advertising discount and other benefits.

Crowdfunding of major reporting projects. Co-ops’ trustworthiness makes them ideal for cultivating crowdfunding, which is peer networking monetized.

Grants. Because co-ops are by law oriented toward service to members rather than profits to investors, news co-ops will be able to seek grant funding for special projects or to ensure coverage of specific issues, such as the environment. Such grants will likely be sporadic and most will flow through a fiscal sponsor.