The Bristol Cable operations ninja Will Franklin on membership and sociocracy
Description
The Loop is a Journalism Value project podcast, brought to you by Reference. We are interviewing the members of this network about key challenges for them, ranging from funding and business models, to community engagement and organizational structures, as we explore what success and sustainability looks like for European independent media today.
On today’s episode we sneak into The Bristol Cable, an independent media founded in 2014, in the city of Bristol, England. What started as a grassroots project, ran by volunteers, is now a ten-person horizontally managed newsroom. There are four full time reporters, people in charge of operations, tech, strategy, community events and social media. Recently a people and wellbeing lead joined the team.
Besides the online edition, the Cable publishes a free quarterly print magazine with 30.000 copies. As a cooperative, it is owned by its 2500 members, paying, on average, nearly 5£ every month. And they have a say in the most structural decisions in the newsroom.
Listen to this episode to find out more about how their membership program grew and how the newsroom is horizontally managed through sociocracy principles.
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