Justin Auciello was honored in 2013 at the White House as a Champion for Change for his work during and after Hurricane Sandy. Photo via NJ News Commons. RELATED LINKS

“Foundations take on projects to improve local news and information” by Steve Outing on Knight blog, 10/30/14

“Small news startups try to survive and cover ‘ignored’ New Jersey news” by Steve Outing on Knight blog, 11/19/14

“A foundation eager to act learns to listen first” by Steve Outing on Knight blog, 12/17/14

“In Wisconsin, a vacant newspaper building takes new life” by Steve Outing on Knight blog, 01/21/15

This post is one in a series on what four community and place-based foundations are learning by funding media projects that help to meet their local information needs. All are funded through the Knight Community Information Challenge.

The ideal of abundant local news, informed communities and an engaged citizenry may rest on some seriously overworked people — in newsrooms with trimmed staffs, and in startups that often struggle with finding sustainable business models.

That’s the case in New Jersey, which continues to suffer from a shrinking of the number of working journalists, and thus less community coverage. In addition, the state’s northern region often gets overshadowed by news from bordering major metro markets in Philadelphia and New York City, leaving Jersey residents short-changed.

But what might improve this situation is the wave of small, independent news organizations that have appeared in recent years across New Jersey. Some are run by journalists, others by people with passion for serving their communities’ information needs. Typically, they work long hours, have few resources and the long-term survival of their enterprises is not assured.

Nevertheless, this loose network of fledgling local-news enterprises may be what keeps New Jersey residents informed on issues and uncovers corruption that otherwise could flourish. That’s why the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, based in Morristown, is supporting six local-news operations in New Jersey and New York with its Journalism Sustainability Project, which is funded in part by Knight’s Community Information Challenge.

Each of the six is getting a variety of assistance from Dodge, including a $5,000 micro-grant for each operation to be spent, ideally, on revenue experiments. Josh Stearns, director of journalism and sustainability for Dodge, is working with the multiple founders and offering guidance, especially on financial sustainability and growth. One thing Stearns quickly realized is that each operation needs to diversify its revenues, but often the founders can’t find the time to focus on that.

Most of the local-news enterprises taking part in the Dodge project are considering revenue sources such as membership programs (be a regular donor and receive benefits of some sort) and running local, in-person events. Shared advertising sales is a possibility further down the road. Crowd-funding also holds appeal, and in early 2015 some of the news startups will experiment with a multi-week campaign to raise money for their local newsgathering using Beacon, a popular web platform for raising money to finance journalism and writing projects.

The enterprises that Dodge is helping represent a diverse mix of approaches to local news, but each is small for now — really small. Consider Morristown Green, a news website covering everything from city government to the arts to crime in that city of 19,000 located 35 miles due west of Manhattan. The site is operated by one tireless journalist, Kevin Coughlin, who started it for the Star-Ledger in 2007 when he was a reporter there. He left the newspaper in late 2009, then relaunched Morristown Green on his own the next year.

Coughlin’s dedication to covering Morristown is admirable, and much needed. He notes that when he covers city-government meetings, he is typically the only reporter in attendance. Coughlin can’t survive on the scant revenues that the news site brings in, so he does freelance video work on the side. He estimates that a typical workweek for him is 80 to 90 hours. Think about that: Without a person willing to make that kind of personal sacrifice, many Morristown government meetings would have no one covering them.

While Coughlin works hard, he does get lots of help from community members, who write and photograph for the site, but without pay at this point. To reach a point where he can bring on more paid help, the journalism entrepreneur realizes that he must go beyond getting local businesses to advertise on MorristownGreen.com. Stearns is giving Coughlin guidance, and one of the micro-grants. Hosting events is one possible revenue source, including resurrecting a local film festival that Coughlin ran in the past.

When Hurricane Irene hit the New Jersey coast in August 2011, a non-journalist, Justin Auciello, set up Jersey Shore Hurricane News on Facebook, where he shared and verified news and images from others about the disaster and its local impacts. Three years after a strong initial public reception, New Jersey Hurricane News is still going, having morphed from a temporary disaster-news service to an ongoing focus on breaking regional news, weather and traffic. Auciello is more curator and verifier than producer of original content, and the site has 226,000 people following it, some of them sharing alerts, photos, and video when they encounter local breaking news events. Auciello keeps it all going, also posting to Twitter (18,000 followers), and submitting Jersey news content to WHYY in Philadelphia in a paid partnership deal. The latter is his only revenue stream, for now.

As another local news entrepreneur supported in part by the Dodge sustainability program, Auciello is looking for how to get New Jersey Hurricane News bringing in new revenue streams. Going “backward” from how most news startups do it, he began on Facebook and only now is close to launching a website with the New Jersey Hurricane News brand, which opens up business opportunities including accepting advertising. Under Stearns’ guidance, Auciello is clear that advertising alone won’t pay the bills. Ideally, he’d like to experiment with seven or eight revenue streams. “Even if only three or four work out, I’d be in good shape.” Alas, there’s the issue of finding time for such experiments.

Since Auciello works full time as a city planner and land-use consultant, making New Jersey Hurricane News sustainable is a necessity long term. He recognizes that the demands of keeping a popular news service going as a side project are stressful, and he probably can’t keep it up without bringing in some helpers and/or getting revenue flowing in order to cut hours from his day job.

Not every recently launched New Jersey news startup is run by a one-man/woman band, of course. Three-year-old New Brunswick Today, serving the east-central New Jersey city of 56,000, has three founders and a network of freelancers who work for $20 per news story. The website and monthly, bilingual newspaper emphasizes public-accountability journalism and has become a powerful local watchdog. Publisher Sean Monahan says that the operation survives for now mostly on 25 local advertisers, and to a much lesser extent on individual and business donations. He attributes the advertising success to date to being able to offer print and online advertising together. Plans are to launch a “sister” news operation soon in neighboring Edison, which is twice the size of New Brunswick.

Monohan and his partners certainly are not getting rich; he donates time to New Brunswick Today and works otherwise as a web developer. The trio, who also are working with Dodge’s sustainability program, have to find new revenue streams if they expect to pay themselves adequately, and pay better freelance rates. “This has to scale to be worth the trouble,” says Monahan.

As I continue to watch the Journalism Sustainability Project over the next year, we expect to see the New Jersey news startups try new business ideas. I’ll keep you posted here on KnightBlog. The cities and towns they serve truly need these fledgling news outlets to make it, for the sake of those communities’ health.

Steve Outing is a writer and digital media consultant.