When a group of former professional journalists teamed up with bloggers in the Kansas City area last year to launch KCFreePress.com, an online publication featuring local news and events, it grabbed my interest. On the day it launched, Lucas Wetzel, the publication’s editor-in-chief, wrote a nice welcome article that directly spoke to me:

You might be wondering why anyone would want to launch a media outlet at a time when the news industry is turned on its head. Newspapers continue to shrink in size or disappear altogether, TV news ratings are down, and nobody seems to know what’s next. It is, to say the least, a moment of great uncertainty for the industry.

I wasn’t so much in the camp of disbelief, but rather in the one of deep curiousity – with participation in an online publication myself and undergraduate studies in journalism, I wanted to learn more. So, I came up with 12 questions to ask and I contacted the teams behind Omaha.net and ThePostSD.com, two other online publications that recently launched on the Prairie, to participate in a short interview series on Silicon Prairie News.

Over the next three days you’ll see the questions below answered by these three organizations:

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• KC Free Press – a web-based news and information source serving metropolitan Kansas City
• The Post – a story co-op and South Dakota’s home for journalism
• Omaha.net – a community website, delivering local writing, video, businesses and events

Questions:

1. When and why did you create your online publication?
2. What is its focus, and in addition to its content, what information does it feature?
3. What can visitors of your website regularly expect to see on your homepage and what makes it, as marketers say, sticky?
4. Who is on the team behind the development of your publication’s website and the management of its content? How did you all come together?
5. What pulled you in to creating online content and what affect, if any, did the worsening state of the print industry have on your decision?
6. What is your background and how does is relate to your current endeavor?
7. Do you feel your publication is truly innovative and adding to the new models of content creation, distribution, and business?
8. Is there a similar publication that inspired your team to create yours? If so, which one(s)?
9. Do you or any of your team members work full-time for your publication?
10. Could you introduce us to two of your contributors, telling us a bit about each?
11. How would one go about either applying to write for your publication or pitching you a story?
12. Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

If you know of another online publication located on the Prairie that recently launched, please contact me at danny@siliconprairienews.com.