Extra Extra! Help wanted: Newspaper... details inside.

Ever wanted to be a journalist? Well, now you can!

I am currently working on trying to organize the first Second Life newspaper... the Linden Gazette would be the working title, I imagine

This is how it would work:

1) Create a newspaper stand of sorts (you know, the little box that sells newspapers on your local street corner) out of as few prims as possible (to keep down on costs). This would be copied to whoever wanted one (they would come to me and ask for a copy, so I could set them up properly.) These stands would then be set up at popular locales... teleport stations, dance clubs, drama stages, and so on.

2) Each of these stands will dispense papers for five dollars apiece (subject to change as I figure out how much this will cost). 20% of this (one dollar so far) would go to the site owner. The remaining 80% would go to the newspaper company.

3) The newspaper company would then distribute the money to the journalists, depending on how much they contributed and how much money was made... if there's a high readership, the journalists would become rich in no time The paper would keep an amount to itself to further development and upkeep costs. And a little profit...

4) The newspaper would most likely be in Notecard form... either one long one or one notecard per section, or something. Perhaps int he future we could also attach an image of the front page, with the top stories in huge text

5) The newspaper would most likely be a weekly affair. It would be updated with a script that allowed the editor (which would probably be me to "beam" the new edition to the news stands, creating an instant update. (Hopefully this is possible... if a TV station can be done, a newspaper should be a piece of cake... wouldn't mind a good coder to do it for me though

6) In a perfect world, I wouldn't mind at LEAST one journalist per Sim. This would be their "beat", or locale that they live in/spend most of their time in. They would collect news stories from their neighbors, coworkers, and so on. Possible news stories could be: conflicts between communities, rumors of impending things, town meetings, interviews with important people of the community, details of hosted events, and so on. There would also be an editorial section and a letters to the editor section too Journalists would be paid on a per-story basis, collecting a percentage depending on how much of the paper they wrote.

anyone interested, or questions, or suggestions? Please, post it here or message me in-game (Lordfly Digeridoo, I live in Slate .

Thanks,

Lordfly

Lordfly,

Let me know if you need anyone to cover Immaculate. I would be interested .

Zana

Soudns like a great idea, I just want to tell you that this is NOT the first Newspaper, lol.

cool, the in-world news paper shall live again. I really want to help work on this but i am too busy with 2 other projects. but i got some pics and logs of some interesting stuff. IM me if you would like em

LOL, what he said. You might want to talk to Kathy Yamamoto about that. There ceased to be a point in having a user-run newspaper with the coming of Hamlet Linden.
Plus, we're still a bit small, and whenever something remotely interesting happens, its either previously announced by the Lindens as an event or instantly spread through word of mouth.
Also, the TV project is going under because it depends on LSL features that pose security problems and are being removed in future versions, and its only really possible within a single sim.
Bear in mind that, at present, a sim can only take 20 or 30 ppl at most, and lags horribly if forced to do so.
Still, major kudos for the power of initiative and spirit of innovation. May all our future residents have your proactive mindset.

Some things...

1) Sorry, didn't know my paper wasn't the first

2) What did Hamlet do?

3) Not everything important is reported by "official" channels. Sometimes an impromptu meeting of the sim's residents happens about, say, too much junk coming from the Sandbox. You could send a reporter there and have them interview the attendees, and then write a story about it. When it's published, the rest of the world is alerted to the hazards of the sandbox. Or something.

The official ways of communication also don't allow for special feature articles... for instance, showcasing a celebrity within the town, or showing the wonders of a certain district. These would have to be reported by reporters, not the official "This is happening, come to it!" channels.

4) Even if the major broadcast flag goes out, I would have no problem going to each sim and broadcasting each newspaper stand separately... as long as I only had to go to the 30-or so Sims and just say "broadcast all" 30 times. I don't want to hunt for 50 newspaper stands

Josh

Well, short note (RL calling) since my name came up.

Turtlemoon Publishing has ceased short term efforts to create a newspaper because of a general lack of interest. I've enough business education to know that merely creating a paper when there is no interest won't make interest appear like magic Market studies have determined it's untenable until we reach about the 5000 active member mark. Also, that’s about the time enough reporters and columnists would be available to make the paper larger than sim-regional.

Hamlet's excellent coverage may have made it appear to the public like the news is sufficiently covered - and under-cut demand, but I have no real way of knowing that without adequate polling tools - coming in 1.1

The business directory will likely also be put off for a while. The fact that the Lindens are creating a business listing database - presumably with more features than I can cram in a note card - make it unlikely I'd see a return on investments. On the other hand, I am considering a short-term publication to cover until they release theirs. It would obviously be less financially ambitious than the original plans

Lordfly, if you have any questions about my own experiences or thoughts, or you'd like to explore some sort of cooperative venture, please leave me an IM