There’s one project I’ve come across recently that might be interested in taking part in this, a
blog called The Peoples News started by a group of university students active in Quora that is a member of The Media Fund cooperative.
I’ve talked with the founder of the site, and he is very interested in the future to transform it to a cooperative, he already started a Loomio group. The site has had 40 different people write articles, mostly university students like the founder. I am not one of the founders, but would be happy to help with thinking about possible collaboration between the Platform 6 and The Peoples News. The site is left leaning, but has writers from different political leanings. Right now the site has a growing amount of traffic, but not nearly enough to make it a profitable business. However, the founder said he is planning to eventually turn it into either a writer-, reader or multistakeholder cooperative, and would like to try out new innovative ways of funding media. I’m working with The Peoples News currently to help their writers promote another platform cooperative I’m involved in, WeCollective. Some potential future ideas for ideas for The Peoples News:
- The site has already written numerous articles about cooperatives, and could help with raising awareness of the cooperative business model.
- The site could be used to advertise and promote Platform 6 cooperatives.
Indeed, this article of mine there includes both general awareness raising of cooperatives along with a direct link to a WeCollective in the end ;).
There’s been some discussion in Social Coop Loomio group about starting a blog or even a blog platform. There’s also an article by Robert Benjamin about transforming Medium into a platform cooperative. Perhaps transformation of The Peoples News into a platform cooperative could be a launching pad for something bigger. I made a short and vague post on social coop about a blogging platform cooperative that could be to Medium what Resonate is to Spotify and would incentivize long-read articles.
I’m going to have a call with The Peoples News founder Iwan Doherty probably this Thursday. Going to also email him about this thread here.