Free as in Pizza

I am a programmer at an alt-weekly. Here are some things I’d like to try:

1. Non-free online classifieds. Yeah, well, we have these, and Craigslist has been a problem for that business model. But here’s a gimmick: It would cost money to post a basic free-form listing, but you could bring the price down by providing a more detailed, granular, and professional listing. This is the opposite of the classic model where we charge more if you want to add pictures or extras. Forget that. You want to add real pictures of the apartment you’re showing? Take 10% off for each room you photograph. You could get all the way down to free if you were willing to put the extra effort into it. Reading listings would be free, as usual, and the experience would be better because there is a built-in incentive for people to make their listings better.

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On Saturday, January 24th 2009, there will be an all day media industry meetup in the Washington DC area. The theme is innovation: creating better ways to deliver news. It’s a chance for journalists, news org techies, bloggers, editors, publishers, and everyone in between to get together and share our best ideas and strategies, and to talk about practical, common solutions to the problems we’re facing. The event will be free and is open to everyone who is interested. The only requirement is that everyone should come prepared to participate.

You can sign up to attend on the NewsInnovation DC wiki page.

The meetup will be held BarCamp style, which means that all of the presentations will be given by participants on a schedule decided by consensus on the day of the event. If you have a success story or strategy that you want to share, a prototype that you want to demonstrate, a discussion that you want to have, or a big question that you want to ask, this is the place to do it.

No special expertise is required to present, just a passion for what you’re doing and a willingness to share. For more background on BarCamps and how they work, see the Wikipedia page on BarCamp.

Similar events are happening in Chicago, Portland and other cities, leading up to a national meetup in Philadelphia on April 25th, 2009. For more information, have a look at the BarCamp announcement page on newsinnovation.com.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at wamitchell (at) washingtoncitypaper (dot) com. If you’re interested in helping out or sponsoring (sponsors usually provide food or pay for things), let me know. (I’ll take care of providing free pizza for lunch).

Please share this with anyone you know who might be interested. I don’t have very many contacts in DC media, so I can use plenty of help spreading the word.