The document discusses grassroots and hyperlocal media, focusing on the story of Ozarks Unbound, an independent online media outlet run by Christopher Spencer out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. It details how Ozarks Unbound operates almost entirely for free using open source tools like WordPress, Gimp, Audacity and others. Spencer argues that with the low barriers to entry afforded by these free and low-cost tools, grassroots media has the potential to provide more competition to traditional media organizations.

1. Lost In the Weeds? Grassroots Media Grows Up

2. Who am I? Christopher Spencer: Born in El Dorado, lives in Fayetteville A journalist since 1998: Worked for the El Dorado News Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas Founder of WordCamp Fayetteville and president of the Creative Economy Action Group Inc. Communications chair of the Northwest Arkansas Society of Professional Journalists. Publisher of Ozarks Unbound (June 2009), The Food File.com (April 2010) and Ballotbucks.org (April 2010) 700 to 1000 hits a day

3. Grassroots and Hyperlocal Grassroots Media: Independent, typically small-scale journalism outfits run by someone with a professional media background or at least aspirations. Contains advocacy journalists and citizen journalists who are untrained.

4. Grassroots and Hyperlocal HyperlocalMedia: A term often ascribed to American Journalist Jeff Jarvis who runs BuzzMachine. Hyperlocalencompasses Grassroots Media plus larger corporate efforts like Patch.com (more than 500 sites nationwide), Main Street Connect, Gannett.

5. State of Hyperlocals Block By Block: Community News Summit 2011 – This weekend! #bxb11 Local Grassroots Media: Ozarks Unbound, Fayetteville Flyer, Arkansas Blog (Arkansas Times), Argenta Times (defunct), The City Wire (Fort Smith), First Arkansas News, Monticello Live, Newport Independent, Washington County Observer

6. The Internet – No. 3 with a bullet Source: Pew Research Center

7. Low cost means lots of competitors Less about flash and bang and more about endurance Need to make viewing your site part of their daily routine. Been in the game for more than two years and seen several sites emerge and flame out.

8. Ozarks Unbound The idea was hatched in a bar like all great things. So many experiments with content, so many failures Two and a half years in, growth is steady and it produces several hundred dollars a month

9. Ozarks Unbound - Content Announcements: Unedited, raw press releases. Clipped Fresh: Curated aggregation. Cover what you do best, link to the rest. - Jarvis Original Content: Opinion, News, Political Cartoons, Three contributing writers

10. My (Almost Free) Toolkit

11. My tools – The Heavy Lifters Server account - $19 a month with Fused Networks 100 Gigs bandwidth and 5 Gigs disk space. Need a free ftp program (i.e. Filezilla)

12. My tools – The Heavy Lifters WordPress (The central wheel) An amazing Content Management System: Free and Priceless 36 active plugins right now making my site do what it does. All are free.

13. What is WordPress? WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. WordPress is used by over 14% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites. Five minute installation

14. What are people using? Source:

15. Who is using WordPress? WordPress is used nationally by CNN, the U.S. Government, The New York Times, People Magazine, Locally: Northwest Arkansas Newspapers, Ozarks Unbound, the Washington County Observer, the Fayetteville Flyer, Single Parent Scholarship Fund and numerous other businesses to manage their websites.

16. Examples of WordPress

17. WordCamp Fayetteville

18. WordCamp Fayetteville The purpose of WordCamp Fayetteville is to teach people – including small businesses, nonprofits, educators and journalists – about the free open source WordPress software and other Internet-based innovation. Year One = 100 people at the Town Center Year Two = 200 people at the Reynolds Center

19. My tools – The Heavy Lifters Open Office (Equivalent to Microsoft Word) I write in WordPress but Open Office is great free software for word processing

20. My tools – The Heavy Lifters Gimp (Equivalent to Adobe Photoshop) Use it daily to process, retouch and remix images Ethics on images – Be sure you follow copyright on the images. Google images, istockphoto

21. My tools – The Heavy Lifters Google Reader (Equivalent to AP Wire) My personalized wire service. An area on my site dedicated to headlines from other sites, called Clipped Fresh

22. Secondary Tools - Occasionals Audacity (Equivalent to Garage Band) For audio remixing. Use it about once a month to remix interviews or sound I gather

23. Secondary Tools - Occasionals Inkscape (Equivalent to Adobe Illustrator) For vector-based graphics – creating a square or other design

24. Secondary Tools - Occasionals Scribus (Equivalent to Adobe Indesign) For document layout, print layout

25. Secondary Tools - Occasionals Cyberlink Director ($70) For editing video. Do use this often, but only superficial features

26. Social tools – Bring the Party Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Perfect for pushing out content – headlines and interacting with readers, bringing new people to the site through organic searches

27. Actual Tools – The Hardware Still camera/video camera, voice recorder, tripod, iphone, press pass, business cards

28. Final Cost -$570 and hours of investment in your community Price Tag A laptop $70 – Cyberdirector $200 – Camera $200 – iphone $40 – Voice recorder $15 – Tripod $10 – Name with lanyard $35 – business cards $570 - Total

29. The Revolution? Time to give traditional media more competition. Let’s plot our media domination together Any Questions?