First up in our interview series with new online publications on the Silicon Prairie is KCFreePress.com.
As I wrote yesterday, discovering this website piqued my interest in new online publications popping up in our region. From day one, this site was quite comprehensive, including coverage of politics, food, music, events, and more. When I received their answers to my questions, I was surprised to learn that they have five full-time, or “close to full-time,” employees working on the editorial side.
On second thought, I’m surprised they don’t have more. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from my position at Silicon Prairie News thus far is regarding the time commitment of maintaining a publication – in addition to the creation of the content itself, time must be set aside for tagging, hyperlinking, adding relative media, and overall site maintenance. It’s those that do the latter, in addition to providing quality content, that have a one-up on the others and are positioned to take on more innovative features as they hit the market.
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With regards to the KC Free Press, one element that excites me is their use of Ellington Software for their content management system, which is also used by the Lawrence Journal-World, a well-designed and implemented news site. Check out their answers below to learn more.
These questions were answered by KC Free Press’ editor-in-chief Lucas Wetzel, executive editor Jay Senter, and lifestyle editor Emily Farris, the publication’s chief content creators. You can find their bios and find links to their articles at kcfreepress.com/staff, and learn more about the publication at kcfreepress.com/about.
Silicon Prairie News (SPN): When and why did you create your online publication?
KC Free Press (KCFP): We began putting KCFreePress.com together in late summer of 2009 and launched on December 9. The idea was to create a news and information site with quality writing and strong visuals that had a local focus and took advantage of the possibilities of the Web. We also wanted to create a media outlet that was more open to freelance journalists and part-time contributors than other established publications so that people were writing about what they know and cared about rather than just following a beat.
SPN: What is its focus, and in addition to its content, what information does it feature?
KCFP: KCFreePress.com’s homepage is a mix of hyperlocal news, lifestyle, food and music features, as well as comprehensive event listings and recurring historical studies. Everything on our site has some sort of Kansas City connection – if it’s not a story about someone or something in Kansas City, it’s written by a Kansas Citian. And because we’re built for the web, and our coverage is photo and video heavy, every day the homepage paints a completely different – but very whole – picture of life here.
SPN: What can visitors of your website regularly expect to see on your homepage and what makes it, as marketers say, sticky?
KCFP: Visitors can expect to see between three and five new stories a day, Monday through Friday. The video “man on the street” feature, Speak!KC, a comprehensive events calendar and photo galleries are staples of the site as well. But we also recognize that Web readers want to bounce around from one site to the next, so we want to build KCFreePress.com into a hub that links out to other media outlets, blogs and sites to give people the information and commentary they’re looking for.
SPN: Who is on the team behind the development of your publication’s website and the management of its content? How did you all come together?
KCFP: Our publisher, Jeff Henry, tapped his team at BigShot Design put together the initial comp, and the site runs on Ellington software, which is the Content Management System and design platform used by the Lawrence Journal-World, GolfWeek and other national news and information sites. We were introduced to each other through mutual friends and colleagues, and each of us used our common interest in new developments in Web journalism to put our heads together and see what we could create.
SPN: What pulled you in to creating online content and what affect, if any, did the worsening state of the print industry have on your decision?
KCFP: The fact that the print business model is getting rocked pretty hard was a big factor for us in deciding to launch a Web-only publication. We were all pretty frustrated by the fact that you keep hearing stories about how journalism is in this horrible decline, when we’re living in an era where you can do things with the Web that you could never have done in print or on the radio or on TV.
SPN: What is your background and how does is relate to your current endeavor?
Jay: After working in Major League Baseball for a couple of years, I went back to school to study journalism at the University of Kansas. While I was in Lawrence, I got a job as a reporter at the Lawrence Journal-World, which was doing some pretty ahead-of-its time things on the Web.
Lucas: I worked for three years at Universal Press Syndicate as their assistant acquisitions editor, where I edited syndicated features and combed through piles of comic submissions. I also did freelance feature writing for the Kansas City Star, Lawrence.com and various magazines that have since disappeared.
Emily: For two years, I edited Nerve.com‘s pop culture blog, Scanner, and in October of 2008, I published a cookbook, “Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven.” In the middle of all of that, I moved back to Kansas City.
SPN: Do you feel your publication is truly innovative and adding to the new models of content creation, distribution, and business?
KCFP: I don’t know if anything we’ve done would be labeled “truly innovative.” But I do think we’ve been able to put pieces of what’s worked well in other places together in a way that doesn’t exist in our market. We’ve really tried to take full advantage of the multimedia elements available on the platform we use, and multimedia reporting and presentation definitely is not something that the other outlets in town are really focused on.
SPN: Is there a similar publication that inspired your team to create yours? If so, which one(s)?
KCFP: I think we saw what the Journal-World was able to do with ljworld.com – particularly in making the site a real community forum, and not just a place where people write nasty things about each other anonymously – and felt like we could implement something similar in Kansas City.
SPN: Could you introduce us to two of your contributors and tell us a bit about each?
KCFP: Dave LaCrone (known to local bloggers and tweeters as “The DLC”) writes the popular food blog, kclunchspots.com and works in the public library system in Kansas City. He covers anything from an extensive feature on KC Restaurant week, to a tour of ethnic grocery stores and eateries, to doing a guerilla wine tasting in the parking lot of a local drug store.
Stephen Mueller and Ersela Kripa co-author an ongoing series called Commuter City that traces the evolution of Kansas City from a pedestrian friendly downtown to one that caters to the needs of the automobile. They run AGENCY, an architecture and design firm in New York, but developed and wrote the series for us while working in Kansas City for several months.
SPN: Do you or any of your team members work full-time for your publication?
KCFP: Five of us work full-time or close to full-time on the editorial side.
SPN: How would one go about either applying to write for your publication or pitching you a story?
KCFP: storyideas@kcfreepress.com
Just send a few sentences about who you are, what you’d like to write, along with a sample pieces and three examples of your published writing.
SPN: Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
KCFP: The only thing I’d add is to recommend dropping by the site periodically, as we’ll be mixing it up quite a bit over the next few months. Thanks for having us!
