by Bill Mitchell Published July 23, 2009 2:35 pm

By Lisa Loving, The Skanner News Group

From Local Communities to Communities of Interest

GOAL: How do we recreate our community-based news and issues coverage within current economic realities? As a 34-year-old African American-owned weekly newspaper chain, we have been forced to cut our paper distribution to every other week.

Going digital for The Skanner presents unique obstacles — most importantly, the digital divide between urban African and African American households and fully-wired technology. How can we stay in business as an ethnic newspaper in communities that suffer disproportionately from lack of computer access?

BIG IDEA: We have worked to widen our local geographic communities into larger communities of interest around the globe. Since I started in this job in May 2008, TheSkanner.com’s Web traffic has tripled, to nearly 800,000 hits in the month of June. Traffic is flowing in from Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey and Paris, France, to name a few.

1. We have worked toward the goal of becoming a daily news source juxtaposing national and international stories about African and African American news with local reporting not covered by daily (or often weekly) newspapers in our local geographic region. Examples include constant updates of the New Years Day BART shooting in Oakland, Calif., and the appeals of Death Row inmate Troy Davis; entertainment industry celebrity interviews, book and film reviews by our freelancer in Chicago, Kam Williams; local stories about the educational system, city council and civil rights; and great photos (plus video) from Seattle and Portland community events. Strategic use of an e-blast system of Web site promotion drives a significant amount of our weekly site traffic.
2. While our Web site story choices are often heavy on national and international news, over the past five months we have steadily worked to build a connection among our local readers through Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and our YouTube channel. These efforts are still in their infancy but are moving ahead steadily. They relate to what is perhaps the most important part of the Big Idea…
3. As an African American-owned institution that serves the black community, The Skanner has made bridging the digital divide part of its mission as a newspaper. The kick-off of our Web site redesign, slated for July 30, is linked to a local Community Development Commission’s construction of seven free computer labs scattered across Portland. We have made a formal partnership in which our staff members agree to lead some workshops at the computer centers, and The Skanner runs advertising trades with the computer centers. In return, the centers keep TheSkanner.com as their home page on each terminal, and center teachers use our Web site as a teaching tool in their free classes. We’re starting this model in Portland and if it works, we’ll be launching it in Seattle by the end of the year.
4. Finally, we have generated two community service projects on our Web sites that are rooted in our local communities but have an appeal to a wider audience. One is a Cold Case Murder File Google map in cooperation with the Portland Police and the Multnomah County Cold Case Squads; the other is an Emergency Preparedness info page built out of an award-winning investigative project we printed last year. Two future projects include a small business incubator page with links to local lenders and blueprints for business plans; another is a job search page with bids and classifieds and links to resources for resume writing, computer skills trainings and more.