Exeter Observer has been granted £5,000 of bespoke co-operative business development support by Co-ops UK with financial support from The Co-operative Bank.
The support is to help Exeter Observer develop opportunities to expand its operations and place its independent public interest news publishing on a sustainable footing. It will come from two sources.
Dave Boyle of The Community Shares Company will provide business development consultancy services. He has more than twenty years’ experience of working with voluntary and community sector organisations and has been actively engaged with media co-ops for over a decade.
He produced a 2012 report for Co-ops UK which presented co-operative business models as the answer to the emerging crisis in public interest journalism publishing, and authored the output report from the joint 2013 Carnegie UK Trust and Co-ops UK Make Your Local News Work project, which further explored the potential for co-operative local media in the UK.
He has since worked with publishers including Manchester Mill, Manchester Meteor and New Internationalist, which has twice successfully raised significant development finance via community shares.
The Bristol Cable will also provide mentoring support to help Exeter Observer develop its approach by sharing insight into its successful implementation of the community/producer business model that many researchers, policy-makers and other sector professionals consider the best way to finance independent public interest media.