{"id":46501,"date":"2018-11-30T11:30:54","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T18:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=46501"},"modified":"2021-02-08T08:09:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T15:09:56","slug":"online-news-startup-wins-seed-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2018\/11\/30\/online-news-startup-wins-seed-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Online news startup wins seed money"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>n up-and-coming Calgary local news site, The Sprawl, has been awarded significant seed money as it strives to become a sustainable online publication for the community.<\/p>\n

S<\/span>prawl, the creation of local free-lance journalist Jeremy Klaszus, has been accepted to be a part of the Digital News Innovation Challenge (DNIC) and received $100,000 in seed capital along with $50,000 in the Facebook marketing budget.<\/p>\n

Klaszus got the word of the award in October.<\/p>\n

The Sprawl, which launched on the web in 2017, has been mainly crowdfunded, with approximately over 350 people were supporting it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big thing is now we can hire and pay freelancers,”\u00a0 Klaszus said in an interview.<\/p>\n

He said they\u2019re in the process of figuring it out how else to use the money, but they have plans for expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s highly unusual in this day and age in terms of local news organization getting financial support from people,\u201d<\/p>\n

In its pitch to the DNIC, The Sprawl not only showed off its online work, but also a website, which is something the publication didn’t have before.<\/p>\n

DNIC is a collaboration between the Ryerson School of Journalism, Digital Media Zone (DMZ), and Facebook Journalism Projects.<\/p>\n

Klaszus became aware of DNIC after people contacted him about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bunch of people sent it to me, saying, ‘This sounds exactly like what you\u2019re doing.’ I looked at it and was like, \u2018Oh yeah, that is very aligned with what we\u2019re doing,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Klaszus was shortlisted after applying. He did a pitch in Toronto in March, explaining what The Sprawl was about.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, what I told them was \u2018We do pop up journalism. So instead of trying to cover everything in the city all the time, we cover one thing at a time and go deep on it,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Klaszus said that his pitch seemed to resonate with DNIC representatives.<\/p>\n

The Sprawl was one of the five candidates that took part in the challenge, and and the only candidate from west of Ontario.<\/p>\n

Candidates got help with their presentations from the program experts, both on the journalism and business sides.<\/p>\n

Klaszus praised the program experts and said that they really helped him map out the future of the publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big things was that I don\u2019t have a background in business, that\u2019s not my natural area of expertise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these people do have experience in that, so that was a big help in terms of mapping out what\u2019s next for The Sprawl, how we reach it, and how we grow in crowdfunding so that it becomes sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience overall was, \u201cgood, but intense at times, but good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Klaszus added that he had a strong sense of \u201cstaying true to the concept\u201d after the challenge, and that has helped him stick to his news niche.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shouldn\u2019t just become like other big news organizations,” he said “Now that we have the money, it doesn\u2019t mean we do daily news.”<\/p>\n

Klaszus said what has helped is the excitement about The Sprawl expressed by people at the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were like, \u2018oh that\u2019s something that\u2019s not happening elsewhere, this is an original thing,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ready to cover Calgary. <\/strong>Jeremy Klaszus, founder and editor of The Sprawl, on Oct. 25, 2018. Klaszus said the money he received has opened up a “window of oppritunity.” (Photo by Brett Klassen\/The Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A local pop up journalism publication took part in The Digital News Innovation Challenge and won big. [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":491,"featured_media":46502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"S3 Local Publication Wins Big In Toronto BK","footnotes":""},"categories":[711,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46501"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47849,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46501\/revisions\/47849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}