There's destruction, yes; also creation

The stories of destruction in the news-media revolution come every day now, and it's a safe bet the pace will quicken. It will be hard to watch, and also hard to quit watching. But the creative side of this "creative destruction" story is well under way.

I've been watching the springing up of small, community news sites -- usually 1 or 2-person operations -- and thought I'd pass along a couple of data points. Both refer to for-profit community sites that are 6-8 months old, and run purely on advertising:

-- The husband/wife team that runs Ann Arbor Chronicle already is making enough revenue to pay household bills, including health insurance.

-- Bob Gough, who single-handedly runs Quincy News, takes home a salary of $1,000 a week. This in an Illinois town of 40,000 with a daily newspaper and 2 local TV stations as competitors.

Both of these operations -- and other for-profits I wrote about at OJR yesterday -- are hanging tough in the current recession, and even expect to expand during it. Ultimately, no one knows if they, or other new models, will make it. But I think they're good examples of opportunities that are opening up and will open up, not just city-wide operations but also neighborhood sites and topic-centered sites. Note the new community projects the NYT is launching.

It's hardly unrealistic for an Annenberg student to think that he or she could leave USC and be the instant creator of one of these sites -- with bucket loads of growth potential.

Update: Jane Stevens, a visiting fellow at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, also wrote this week about the new community sites being rapidly created. She cited some of my OJR blog but also gave a rich report on the large number of neighborhood sites in Seattle. Here's her post.