What’s ahead for Dakotafire?

Many of you loyal readers know that Dakotafire started as a Knight Community Information Challenge project, with the first three years of funding provided by the Knight Foundation, the South Dakota Community Foundation, and corporate and individual sponsors.

We are so very grateful for the opportunity that initial funding provided for getting Dakotafire started. In the terminology of business, it’s given us a chance to establish “proof of concept”—we’ve figured out how this kind of collaboration with newspapers can work.

That initial funding is now at an end, and Dakotafire will have to stand on its own if it’s to succeed.

We have a plan for making it a self-sufficient enterprise, which includes a change in paper and more advertising than we’ve had up to now. But we aren’t planning to rely on advertising to cover the whole cost of getting Dakotafire to you. That’s because our primary distribution method—insertion in our partnering newspapers—puts some limits the amount of advertising we can include and how big the magazine can get. We also don’t want to sacrifice the content that helps us live up to our goal of “sparking rural revival, one story at a time.”

So that means we are seeking support from the people who value that content, including readers, corporate sponsors or local economic development groups.

We’re also asking newspapers to cover expenses that grant funding has covered up to this point. This may mean that some newspapers will no longer choose to participate. In that case, readers who still wish to get Dakotafire can subscribe.

I am happy to answer questions if you have them; e-mail heidi {at} dakotafire.net. Thanks for reading!