How Training Has Helped Some Community Publishers Thrive

By: Tom Grubisich | Street Fight

When Block by Block‘s first Community News Summit wrapped up in 2010, participating publishers told organizes that what they needed most was hands-on training — not in how to do better journalism but to succeed in business. Out of that feedback were born two training initiatives — the Summer Camp, funded by the Patterson Foundation, and the Community Journalism Executive Training, funded by the Knight Foundation and administered by the Investigative News Network.

Rusty Coats, principal (with his wife Janet) in the Coats2Coats media consultancy, was the head coach for both, while Janet focused on fund raising for the training.

Here, Coats tells how the training gave a number of publishers the know-how to get their sites into positive revenue territory in 2013.