If you have the ability to read constantly and research any subject; if you understand the importance of informing the public about what is going on around them, if you are willing to sacrifice a little comfort for truth, whatever it might be, you have the opportunity to help your fellow citizens in strengthening their place in the world and preserving its opportunity for future generations.

Spend 15 minutes researching the fate of news organizations and you realize the industry is dire straits, with massive layoffs and tens of thousands of talented reporters, editors and other people from the industry losing their jobs.

The loss of local newspapers is a problem. We have to reinvent paying for them.

The world’s biggest con job suggests news organizations are a combination of television and movies.  What that means is high production costs, big budgets, and storytelling rather than reporting. Moreover, demand for money to feed the mechanism threatens independence and limits truth by the need to coddle advertisers so they will pay us. If you buy the idea that news is a movie, then their way of doing things is a capital intensive barrier to entry, unless you have iMovie and grandkids.  Then you are Spielberg for a dime.

WHEN EVERYONE ELSE IS GOING SOUTH, GO NORTH

DrudgeReport is a real news site.  It lists most major news organizations in one place, so readers can pick and choose their news sources at will.  DrudgeReport also runs an archive so that every article they have ever listed can be looked back on.  Drudge (number 35) is consistently among the top news sources in the United States because it makes it possible for its readers to study news and information the way they want it and not be preached to by talking heads that cost a fortune to bleat out news porn.  Of the 35 sites listed 24 are outside North American and many are in a foreign language, making DrudgeReport's position even more significant. Make note of Drudge’s Average Visit Duration in the link, compared to everyone else. Its 23 minutes. CNN is 2.59  Why do readers spend so much time there? 

News is educational.  News stories are the tip of the information iceberg and once news of any kind alerts readers to a subject they are interested in, the internet can help them educate themselves as deeply as they care to look.  The internet is school, you are the school bell.

Any person in the world can run a Drudge type news site in their local markets and point to a Drudge, who in turn points to everyone else if your readers want to wonder off into La La Land. The cost of hosting a Drudge type site can be done as inexpensively as $10 per month for any site on the web, anywhere in the world. 

You can even do it for less money, but if you have any self-preservation instinct at all, you won’t host anything in the United States or any country that cooperates with the United States in any way.  They cannot be trusted at all and their takedown powers are immense. p2p.media uses orange website in Iceland and we do not make a dime by telling you that. Iceland will tell them to go screw themselves (updated to show you are not alone in detecting liars) here is the interview in its entirety from the Internet Archive. Research why you should use Iceland and you will see the benefit.

Beyond the $10 $6.26 per month, you are your only other cost you need to worry about.  If you value your children’s future and that of the world, which is increasingly run by liars, thieves and manipulators (completely unaccountable politicians, corporations and bureaucrats) you will want to write and publish daily first, and then worry about monetizing it along the way. Just because shifty politicians let corporations and lawyers weaken the laws to make unethical practices that weaken public oversight legitimate does not mean you have to put up with it.  STOP BUYING THEIR STUFF.  And that is only the opening round.

This pure HTML website can be copied in its entirety using HTTrack Website Copier. It copies everything, its free, and copying this site is free. I am not going to complain. Once you have it, use the linked HTML program to play with the pages.  Its called Komposer. It is free, open source and essentially HTML for Dummies. There are other programs, but I use Komposer.  Open the index page, and select an underlined heading. It will open a box describing link properties. That is the article you create a link to. You select those based on interests you think your readers may have. Or, in the link, instead of copying a link to an article somewhere else, link to another HTML page you created, say JoeBrown.html. Now when one of your readers clicks the underlined link, they go to your page.  Do not be afraid.  Think paint by numbers, copy and paste, or simply change the text and the links.  Start by saving the original and play with copies.  Think of using Word. Copy, edit change, paste. You can do it.

Resist all temptation to get a free website template from themeforest or one of the free website builders. I have a son who is a software engineer who worked for IBM at one time and who builds sites for a living.  He told me to use a template. I worked for more than 10 years for the largest IT company in the world, and 4 years with the biggest software company in a senior development role (not coding, but project design). The free templates are like a beautiful girl or man coming to you with a pocketful of Viagra and bedroom eyes. I bit and months later still had nothing.  Moreover, I was not convinced news was beauty.  To me news is information and learning, and simple and easy to do is best. I ditched the template. DrudgeReport is news, CNN is entertainment and propaganda.  You want to have lots of stories from members of your community. Your stories are lessons. Get local citizens involved and you will have an audience.  It does not matter if its pretty.  It matters if it is what they feel, even if they are wrong.  You are not a judge, you are simply exposing the world as they see it.  If they think GM is screwing them, or the local council are crooks, give them a voice.  You can be sure a national chain, Google or Facebook will not.

When you do interviews, make sure the people you interview realize their voice is being heard and their opinions count.  Let them know what they think is important.  Its true a lot of people may be poorly informed, or have some ideas that are off the wall.  They may be offensive.  Regardless, if that is how the majority in an area feel, that will reflect how they vote, and how they confront situations in the future.  It is important to know why they got to that point.  Most politicians and those that think they are entitled to tell them what to do and think will fail to do so, creating an even greater separation between the sides.  The failure to reconcile the differences and listen is what kills nations.  They will however conduct polls that are crafted to produce the position they want you to believe, as if to prove it confirms the position they are trying to sell you.  The following two quotes about the law are equally applicable to the average person on the street and their view of how the country is being run.  Simply substitute the economic system for Justice and the law and you will get a true picture of how the economy is working for the so called deplorables of the nation:

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” - Benjamin Franklin

 “If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected--those, precisely, who need the law's protection most--and listens to their testimony.” - James Baldwin

You can create your own HTML pages in Kompozer or you can write everything in Word.  You can add pictures, links and everything in Word and then save it as a web page using Word.  Use the Save as type Web Page, Filtered.  Filtered web pages are way smaller (which you want) but you will have to fix the formating with Komposer, and that's OK.  Have people in the community create web pages they write.  Let them do it in Word, then you take it on USB or through an email and open it and convert it to HTML or simply paste it in a link as a PDF like this "images/whateveryoucallit.pdf".  Go to your local school, old age club, care home, and community meetings and offer a citizen's journalism session and show them this link (its also below).  Note the link is "images/ZINESTER.mp4".  I am showing video in mp4 format.  Shoot it on the iPhone and convert it with iMovie or VLC to .mp4.  VLC is free and open source and there are a bunch of programs that will reduce the size of the video.  iMovie may even do it.

Take what your readers write and reproduce it exactly. You will empower the entire world doing so.  If you are from a foreign country, write everything in your own language, or simply double up the entries, one in each language and color code them.  Search and register a website name, here.  Its in Iceland and no I don't get paid for sending you there.  Once you have it, and you are comfortable setting up pages in HTML, you can post it on your site, which you also get from orangewebsite.  The Bronze or the Silver Plan should be all you need to start. Cheap, reliable.

As for garnering readership in your local market, forget Facebook, Google and people telling you about SEO.  Doing so strips away every single power you have and puts it in the hands of tech companies and governing bodies.  If you can talk, read and see, you live among everything you need to garner attention.  How did they do it 20 years ago?  What changed?  We still drive, look and see. Buildings and signs are still visible even though they are not on a computer screen. Our conversations can still be heard even though they do not come from a speaker. We are being conned into giving up sight, sound and thinking unless it is digital.  Ha.  Look at your kids. Their brains don't work without buttons and touchscreens.

How would you market a garage sale, a community sports event, a yard sale or a local auction? Your entire community is one big billboard, every telephone pole is a media outlet, and every wall is an opportunity to communicate. REMEMBER, you only have to get readers to your site once, and if they like what they see the rest is academic. Think of a website as a live book, or booklet, an encyclopedia, whatever you want it to be.  Websites are something you can create, update, and delete information from continuously.  Save everything, disk space is cheap. 

And use a computer. You can buy a refurbished computer that is more than up to the job, and screens and refurbed PCs are inexpensive.  You can get one or two monitors for it and a dual output video card that handles HDMI and DVI also inexpensively from eBay, Craigslist, Backpage etc. The kids keep buying gaming stuff that is killer powerful and they continually change it out for the next best thing.  The only thing that will hog memory and slow things down are graphics programs.  But there are lots of ways to mod graphics without Adobe, that are freeware. And most refurb computers come with a Windows license, I use Win 7 and will not touch Windows 10, which is simply spyware that works well, and the Win 7 license and Office were already on the refurb unit.  Buy one privately and it will have other programs you may need.

Print a couple of page version of your news site on 8.5 by 11  copy paper, fold it and stick it under car windshields at local stores and shops. Remember it is news and free speech. Include a link to your website.

If you live in a small community, put up a small poster looking for people abused by the Catholic priest.  Or if you are surrounded by farms, ask farmers what they think about companies like Deere using proprietary software in their equipment so that they can no longer service it themselves.  Same goes with their cars and trucks. Ask everyone in the community about problems with drugs.  Or being told the only reason they elected a a person from the other party is because the Russians tricked them and they really did not want to change the way a corrupt system works.  Put everything on iMovie. Now you are better than CNN because you have no obligation to anyone to lie and manipulate.

Think carefully about your setup and operating costs.  They are virtually nothing.  So now look at advertising.  You can sell it for very little.  Look at the savings books kids sell to raise money.  Find a restaurant that will pay for ads with free stuff to YOUR CUSTOMERS, and make sure that the customer knows your news site is the reason. 

If you want quality and lower cost ad banners and signs, look at some guys from India called BannerBuzz selling banners for a small portion of the cost you might normally pay.  I have used them many times and their products are high quality, delivered quickly and they historically have stood behind their products. We do not get a commission by sending you there, they are just a lower cost alternative we found.

Teach your kids and grandkids to think for themselves and bring them into the business. Kids don't know when to shut up.  Good thing.  Give your community a voice.  The only people that is a bad thing for are the corrupt SOBs ruining everything around you. And when they threaten you, read about the Boston Globe expose on abuse in the Catholic Church. You will be in the company of giants.

Tell the story of Canadian Indians.  Stuck in reserves, abused in residential schools, getting pregnant so they can live off child benefits which they give to the male members of the band who beat the crap out of them, use the money to buy drugs, and are protected by the reserve police. Their kids are born with drug abusing parents and the Child Protection Agencies take them away and shop them out to whoever will have them for a buck. 

Or how about your parents?  Walk into care homes and huge numbers are in wheelchairs.  If sitting is the new form of cancer, then care homes are the carriers.  Live your whole life so a business can kill you by planting you on your ass, water you like a plant, and get the monthly checks. 

There are no shortage of stories.  And unlike the old way of doing things, which was to tell the story and move on, now you index them and archive them as a record of behavior and build lessons from them. You could think of it as education by observation and reporting.  Every story leads back to someone, something, and some decision making process that needs to be examined, studied, and potentially fixed.

And when you think of Facebook, Google and social media, think of them as cancer. They spy on you, they spy on your children, they work with the military and government to manipulate and control your behavior and that of your children.  Wind the clock back. What is important is getting people to your news and information source.  Encourage the entire community to contribute, and use it raw.  We are so buried in lies and secrecy a little raw truth will be an astounding change for the better.  I don't need to see a massaged story by a so called professional telling me what happens when someone dies and overdoses with drugs, or some chemical plant owner hiding their disposal lagoons and poisoning our water. And I would rather have 15 children with donated smartphones standing at the edge of one of their disposal pits expressing shock and dismay at what they are doing to us, than some glamor girl in high fashion bleating out faux anger.  Let the kids express how they feel about their parents letting their employers get away with it so they can pay a mortgage.

When you are threatened, that is news.  Use it.  It shows two things. Someone may be benefiting from the corruption, always a good thing to expose, and the other is the difficulty people have when fictions and myths are broken.  Another reason for a story. 

The link below tells the story of following everyone else, and is from 63 years ago.  The portable cassette player was a big thing then.  But the message is timeless.  It talks about people following everyone else rather than thinking for themselves.  It also talks about sitting in front of a TV for hours a day watching other people earn a living.  If that is so exciting you can always sit outside a construction site and watch people at work.  Same idea.  Worth a few minutes of your time.

Go in the Opposite Direction of Everyone Else