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Consulting
CitizenJournalist
Business Plan
Lali Tsertsvadze
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Table of ContentsExecutive Summery 3The Enterprise 7Objectives ..10
Mission Statement . 10
Service 11
Industry Analysis 13Market Analysis 16Competitors 16
SWOT Analysis . 17
Marketing and Sales Strategy 18Timeline . 19
Management Team and Company Structure 20Appendix A 21
Finances. 24Sales Forecast 25
Risk Analysis . 26
Exit Strategy . 26
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Executive Summary
Being a Post-Soviet country, Georgia does not have a tradition of free and independent
journalistic practice or active citizenship. A significant part of the Georgian population
does not trust the media, though the majority of the population still consumes it,
especially TV.
Despite the fact, that Georgian media is known to be lacking professionalism, journalism
still stays to be one of the most popular professions among young people and hundreds of
them enroll in the universities to become professional journalists every year.
Citizen journalism enables ordinary, non-journalist people to produce journalistic
materials and enrich the media industry in the country. This direction of journalism is
becoming more and more popular in the world, while, in Georgia, its still nothing that
people and media representatives are familiar with. The latest tendency of growing the
number of non-journalists creating journalistic pieces talks about the high potentiality of
this business in the country, though.
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CCJ will try to address the above mentioned issues by establishing and running a citizen
journalism consulting company helping already existing media organizations in Georgia. By
providing professional consultation about launching and running citizen journalism
platforms for media companies, CCJ will improve media literacy among the ordinary people,
equip them with opportunity to spread their voice and will help media outlets to receive
more diverse and valuable information from all over the country for free.
Besides, the company will organize meetings with media professionals and possible citizen
journalists to discuss the current issues and enhance the understanding of these topics amongthe people. Citizen journalists will also go to outings to local media outlets to learn about the
working process in contemporary media organizations.
Whats more, involving young undergraduate journalists in CCJ working process will let
them implement their theoretical knowledge in practice. Finally, all these actions will have
positive impact on media and the overall activity level of Georgian society.
CCJ will start running business in Tbilisi, a capital city of Georgia. It aims to get five annual
subscribers for the first year and increase the number of media organizations to twenty
(including outlets outside the capital) by the third year. The company will offer the service
to media organizations independently and the annual subscription fee (depending on the size
and budget of the organization) can be covered directly from the media outlet budget or can
be sponsored from the outside bodies, like the funds, individual sponsors, audiences
donations, etc.CCJ will be run by the management team of two young people who are passionate about
media. Lali, a managing director, is a journalist and a graduate student at Journalism and
Media Management MA program. She has worked as a journalist in newspaper and radio.
She was also employed as a volunteer in the Lithuanian high school within the European
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Voluntary Service project. That is where she first established a citizen journalism club,
which was popular among the school students. Nino, a sales executive and a product
manager, has got a MA degree at Creative and Media Enterprises from Warwick University,
the UK. She is also a journalist and project manager working at the local organization. The
experience and the passion of these two people will help CCJ to meet its objectives and have
an overall positive impact on Georgian media and on the lives of people interested in
journalism and civic activism.Each of the two co-founders hold 30 % of the company while suggesting the rest 40 % to the
investor preferably to the business angel for three-staged investment of GEL60 000.
ObjectivesThe followings are goals and objectives of CCJ for Year 1 through Year 3:
Create a sustainable format of citizen journalism consulting team and enroll it fivemedia organizations in Tbilisi for Year 1 and increase the number of partner
companies including outside-capital-regions to 20 by Year 3.
Establish contacts and start cooperation with our regional and international partnerorganizations in order to implement some joint projects.
Start collaboration with Georgian Universities to choose undergraduate journalismstudents for paid internship at our company.
Become a leader in citizen journalism field in Georgia.
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Mission StatementHaving the unique product for the Georgian market nowadays, CCJ will connect citizens and
media and equip people with practical opportunity to spread their word, while enabling
media organizations to receive journalistic materials from ordinary people for free. Thus, it
will be a profitable company helping citizens become active and the media quality improve.
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The EnterpriseCCJ (Consulting Citizen Journalist) will be a Limited Liability Company, which will help
different Georgian media organizations to set up and run citizen journalism platforms.
Besides servicing the media outlets, it will prepare tutorials for non-journalists how to create
journalistic materials within the opportunities they have got, and organize trainingsforthem.CCJ will open its office in Tbilisi and coordinate the citizen journalism platforms
functioning in regions from there.
Being a Post-Soviet country, Georgia does not have a tradition of free and independent
journalistic practice1 or active citizenship2. A significant part of the Georgian population does
not trust the media, though the majority of the population still consumes it, especially TV3.
Helping citizen journalism along is considered one of the best ways out of situations where
mainstream media dont perform well enough. Recent technological progress equipped most
1According to World Press Freedom Index 2012, Georgia is ranked as 105th among 179 states. Report is
prepared by Reporters without Borders and was published on 25.01.2012. Available at:
http://en.rsf.org/IMG/CLASSEMENT_2012/CLASSEMENT_ANG.pdf[Accessed 24 April 2012];
2Civil society still weak in Georgia, The Messenger Online, published on 19 April, 2012. Available at:
http://www.messenger.com.ge/issues/2589_april_19_2012/2589_edit.html [Accessed 1 May 2012].
3The Georgian Media: Assessments and Development Perspectives: Report by Eurasia Partnership
Foundation, Tbilisi, 2012. Available at: http://www.epfound.ge/files/media_report_final_eng_print.pdf[Accessed
24 April
2012].
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citizens better than the professional journalists were a decade ago.4 Gadgets with cameras
and constant access to the internet allow ordinary citizens to report on the issues that they
are interested in or come across by accident. They can record a video, take a photo, or just
write about the story they think is worth of telling, and they can publish their journalistic
products online, in the real time, using social media tools, and share the story with others. In
other words, Citizen Journalism can be defined as the phenomenon when the people
formerly known as audience employ the press tools they have in possession to inform one
another.
Its not a long time citizen journalism practice has been implemented in the world and its
especially non-common approach for Georgia. In the beginning of its first appearance in the
field, media professionals used to see a competitor in citizen journalism but later they found
it mutually beneficial to incorporate with its representatives. Nowadays almost all main
players of the industry have their own online platforms for ordinary people contributing to
them.
And thats exactly what CCJ suggests its costumers (media companies) to help them putting
citizen journalism in an institutional frame and get journalistic materials from ordinary
people for free.
CCJ, as a citizen journalism consulting company, will share the worlds best practice and
build up its structure on the BBCs, CNNs and Al Jazeeras experiences.
Besides, for vetting, editing, moderating and double checking citizen journalists materials, it
will hire undergraduate students; for that reason we will cooperate with different
4Citizen Journalism and Traditional Media: 5Ws and & H: MA dissertation by Nino Matcharashvili, Warwick
University, England, 2012.
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universities (journalism departments) and in this way, will help young professionals get their
practice.
ObjectivesThe followings are goals and objectives of CCJ for Year 1 through Year 3:
Create a sustainable format of citizen journalism consulting team and enroll it fivemedia organizations in Tbilisi for Year 1 and increase the number of partner
companies including outside-capital-regions to 20 by Year 3.
Establish contacts and start cooperation with our regional and international partnerorganizations in order to implement some joint projects.
Create a popular and acclaimed web portal of young citizen journalists attractingattention of big audience just to promote active citizenship among young people too.
Start collaboration with Georgian Universities to choose undergraduate journalismstudents for paid internship at our company.
Become a leader in citizen journalism field in Georgia.
Mission StatementHaving the unique product for the Georgian market nowadays, CCJ will connect citizens and
media and equip people with practical opportunity to spread their word, while enabling
media organizations to receive journalistic materials from ordinary people for free.Thus, it
will be a profitable company helping citizens become active and the media quality improve.
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ServiceCCJ will serve Georgian media organizations. Each subscriber media organization will get a
service from CCJ lasting for one calendar year and including:
- Helping to establish a platform for uploading materials created by citizen journalists;- Setting up a young professionals team working on vetting, editing, moderating and
fact checking the information provided by citizens;
- Consultation about any kind of citizen journalism work related issue.
CCJ will help media organizations to launch a portal for citizen journalism (will teach them
how to operate the platform, what sections and categories to add to the web-site, how to sort
the information under different sections, etc.).
For each subscriber, we will create a group of three young journalists (chosen by
collaborating with universities) which will be trained by us beforehand. So the subscriber
will get a citizen journalism platform and a team being responsible of operating it properly.
In addition to that, we will do the following for potential citizen journalists:
- Organizing meetings and discussions with professionals and active citizen journalistsjust to get know to each others expectations and needs.
- Study visits to local media organizations four times per year.And:
- Trainings for the journalists who will make a social media managing team fordifferent media organizations.
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So, we think that, in addition to providing a good service for our direct costumers media
organizations we will help along the general situation in the media field in Georgia since
we will work on popularizing citizen journalism and make society be more active. Moreover,
we will help young journalists to implement their university education in practice. The latter
is motivated by our own experience: being young graduated journalists who wanted to work
for an unbiased media outlet, there was no place in the Georgian media.
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Industry AnalysesMedia industry has never been as difficult to analyze as it is today, because the term [Media
Industry] itself has become broaderthan ever lately. Current tendencies in it may be
described as the migration of the media to the Internet. The Internet has become a
dominant medium for news delivery, more and more people get information from the
internet, by some accounts the Web is the most popular source of news for people at work
and the second most popular at home.
In spite of the fact that Georgian citizens, nowadays, have complete freedom and lots of
opportunities to become not only social media users but content creators as well, they dont
take the advantage of this.5Popular social network Facebook proves to be a powerful mean of
spreading information, but according to the research conducted in 20106, it is only used for
sharing the second hand information that already had been published on any other news
portal or agency. Facebook is almost never used as a primary source of information.
This makes it obvious that creating institutionalized citizen journalism platforms that will
enable people who are not journalists by profession or education to upload their materials on
is utterly needed. That will make media organizations see the vital importance of citizen
contributors for surviving in the internet era.
5 ,Bachelor
thesis By Nino Matcharashvili, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, 2011.
6 , (
Facebook- ), Bachelor thesis by Marine
Akhsiashvili, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, 2010.
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The most vulnerable area of the industry for CCJ may be the fact that the news gone online
still dont succeed to make money anywhere in the world. This might make CCJs service less
attractive for media companies. Materials provided by citizen journalists probably will not
have subscribers because the audience does not want to pay for online information. Though,
some people still argue about this, using different examples (iTunes, for instance) saying that
if the content is valuable, not freely available elsewhere, and the payment mechanism is
appropriate, large numbers of users can be encouraged to spend money.
However, citizen journalism creates paid content or not, it still is an important part of media
industry for several reasons and tendencies7:
1. It is free, fast and easily accessible. The most attractive thing that the traditionalmedia professionals see about citizen journalism is that in most cases it is free. Usually
citizen journalists share their materials without asking for any reward. By bringing
citizens into their news reporting process the mainstream media have access to the
most up-to-date and exclusive content.
2. It gives voices to people. Democratisation of news is the second most oftenmentioned benefits of citizen journalism as it brings in the voices that could not
have heard before.
3. It shows different perspectives and angles.When the people are given voices and theyexpress themselves, the stories mainstream media report on become more diverse.
4. It might be alternative to the mainstream media when they do not do their job. Citizen Journalism is capable of replacing traditional media when they fail to coverthe events well enough. This is the time when value of citizen journalism is the
greatest and it might happen in three cases: First, when the stories are from the places
7Citizen Journalism and Traditional Media: 5Ws and & H: MA dissertation by Nino Matcharashvili, Warwick
University, England, 2012.
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where professional journalists cannot go. Second, citizen journalism can act as an
alternative to mainstream media in the countries, where the mainstream media are
under the heavy censorship or control from the government or other political powers.
Third, Citizen reporting is also a significant tool for covering the hyper local news,
which concern the local community but are not big enough to attract the attention of
the mainstream media.
The latter (alternative to the mainstream media when they do not do their job) is the reasonbased on which we can conclude that the service is in demand and CCJ has potential to be a
successful company.
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Market Analysis
As outlined in previous chapters, there isa necessity in the society for them to be able to get
unbiased information (and the materials that are not prepared by the mainstream media that
are inclined to be supporting either the government or the oppositional powers can actually
be unbiased), as well as share their own materials with bigger audiences.Thus, we can assume
thatour service (helping media organizations launch citizen journalism platforms) will be
popular and well-taken in the society.
CompetitionCCJ does not have any direct competitors, though there are still some projects/organizations
which do fragmental work in offering some space for citizen journalists.
http://cdi.org.ge/main/?page_id=364This is a section of the web-site of Civic Development
Institute where stories may be published if a citizen who wants to share information calls the
given number, sends a text message or emails the institution. Stories published there come
mostly from regions of Georgia and are about public schools life. The page is not active the
last time when they uploaded a citizen journalistic piece was in 2012.
http://www.gogroupmedia.net/NewDefault.aspx -- With a help of Eyewitness Studio ordinary
citizens can create video stories. The web-site, basically, uploads the reports about regular
life of the people from regions filmed on their own.
http://cdi.org.ge/main/?page_id=364http://cdi.org.ge/main/?page_id=364http://www.gogroupmedia.net/NewDefault.aspxhttp://www.gogroupmedia.net/NewDefault.aspxhttp://www.gogroupmedia.net/NewDefault.aspxhttp://cdi.org.ge/main/?page_id=3647/28/2019 CCJ Business Plan -- Lali Tsertsvadze
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http://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/archive/UGC_Archive/latest/1051/3153.html --Isa web-addition
of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe where anyone is allowed to upload an article, photo or
video story accompanied by a desirable comment. Reports uploaded there are, mostly, about
sports. The last time the page was updated was a year ago.
http://www.ireporter.ge/-- This is a classic citizen journalism web-site, has been functioning
since December 2010. Everyone can upload their own materials by themselves or send them
to the editor of the web-portal and she will do it for them. According to the administrator
Nino Tchelidze, stories provided by citizens are not edited or corrected. Stories uploaded
there are not exclusive they are shared from other online outlets or are original but the
topics are covered by the traditional media with the same depth and angle.
Even though all of the above mentioned players create space for citizen journalists on the
market, their profile is radically different from the CCJs one none of them offer any kind
of consultation for the mainstream media.
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SWOT Analysis
StrengthsNo direct competitors
Having experienced staff, but not
belonging to any media organization
Unique product
WeaknessesNot tried-out format
Lack of experience in consulting services
New company and not known yet
OpportunitiesBig market and sales growth
Adding new services to the product
New players in media business new potential
customers for us
ThreatsNot financially stable customers (media
organizations)
Political Pressure
Losing editorial independence
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Marketing and Sales Strategy
Before starting collaborating with the mainstream media, we will raise awareness about our
company through our website, social networks, different marketing campaigns, like short
media seminars andinformation meetings for our potential partners.We assume that our
company will get popularity among people easily,so that those attending our trainings
(bloggers, social network active users, etc.) can become our ambassadors, make other peers
interested in our service.
Besides above-mentioned People Supporting strategy, CCJ will sell the service to media
organization principals directly using our contacts in the industry.
We will also use our contacts with funds and organizations working on community
development programs and offer them our service for certain organizations (for example,
several organizations grant finances for social projects in regional or ethnic minority
community media companies).
Combining these three selling strategies (direct selling, people supporting selling and
commissions from donors) we aim to increase our sales to 20 subscribers by Year 2.
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TimelineStart End
Milestones Activities to be accomplished Date Date
Preparation - finalize the training program Mar/ Jun/Level I - prepare team journalists guideline 2014 2014
- open and furnish the office in Tbilisi- launch initial marketing campaign- start finding customers
Preparation - getting 5 subscriptions by September 2013 Jun/ Sep/Level II - recruit and train journalists 2014 2014
- purchase equipment- launch first platform and try out the Plan
Launch - considering the first experience, refine the Sep/ Jun/Year I Plan 2014 2015
- start collaborating with 5 media organizations- purchase more equipment- get 10 subscriptions for next Year
Year 2 - provide service to 10 organizations Sep/ Jun/- increase number of sales to 20 for next year
2015
2016
- purchase equipment
Year 3 - run 20 media organizations- make a new plan for next 3 years Sep/ Jun/
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Management Team and Company Structure
In CCJ key persons are:
Lali -- a managing director -- responsible for overall smoothly functioning of the company;seeking partnerships and implementing new projects.
Nino -- a product manager -- responsible for developing our service constantly, managingCCJ web-portal as well as being a sales executive.
The division of roles is not strict and the management team will work closely and recruit
vetting, editing, moderating personnel together. Preferably, they will be young professionals
whoshare our vision and have the same passion to support active citizenship and advanced
media.
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Appendix A: Management team membersprofiles
LaliTsertsvadze A Managing DirectorPersonal Born 05.10.1989information In Tbilisi, GeorgiaEducation 2011 to today MA in Journalism and Media Management
Georgian Institute of Public Affairs,Tbilisi, Georgia
2007 to 2011 BA of Social Sciences in Journalism (with Honours)Tbilisi State University, Faculty of Social andPolitical Sciences, Tbilisi, Georgia
Relevant Experience 2012-2013 Radio Club Leader, Project Manager AssistantEVS, project Youth on Air, Lithuania;
Intern at Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, Czech
Republic
2009-2012 News reporter24 Hours Newspaper
2010 A translatorJanuary July Newspaper Iberia2009 PR ManagerJuly Malta Polygraph Company2009 PR Manager AssistantMay Moby Group (Mobile Telephones company)
Additional relevant 2011 Environmental Reporting; Deutsche Welle- Akademietraining
2011 Media Development Program trainings; UNDP2010 Media on Trafficking Related issues;
World Vision Georgia2009 School for Democracy;
Young Republicans & Liberal Youth of Georgia
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Nino Macharashvili A Product ManagerPersonal Born 19.06.1990information In Tbilisi, GeorgiaEducation 2011 to 2012 MA in Creative and Media Enterprises
University of Warwick, Centre for Cultural PolicyStudies, Coventry, United Kingdom
2007 to 2011 BA of Social Sciences in Journalism (with Honours)Tbilisi State University, Faculty of Social andPolitical Sciences, Tbilisi, Georgia
2009 to 2010 Erasmus Exchange StudentUniversity of Tartu, Faculty of Philosophy, Tartu,Estonia
Relevant Experience
2013 Product Manager,
2013
2012
JumpStart Georgia
Intern
Dods Government, United Kingdom
Radio Reporter,
Radio Hot Chocolate
2011 Teaching Assistant for Media Research MethodsJanuary-June Tbilisi State University
2009 & 2010 Activity leader and Activity ManagerSummer Buckswood English Language Summer School2010 A journalistFebruary June Magazine Tabula2010 A translatorJanuary July Newspaper Iberia
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FinancesWe ask for GEL 60 000 (for 40 % equity) to be invested in our business phased as the
following:
Phase I Preparation: March / August 2014 GEL 20 000;Phase II Year I: September / August 2015 GEL 20 000;Phase III Year II: September / August 2016 GEL 20 000.We ask for investment to buy equipment for young journalists training, to cover fixed costs,
like office and web portal expenses; to implement our marketing strategy by organizing
meetings and media organization trips; to pay wages to the management team and hired part-
time journalists for citizen journalism managing teams for each media organization.
Each manager will have GEL 1 000 monthly salary (20% will be cut off as salary income tax).
Team journalists will be paid GEL 40010 per one year per one media organization. CCJ will
be free from VAT according to Georgian legislation and will have to pay only 15% of profit
as profit tax.
As CCJ plans to grow sales every year, it will purchase equipment every year to meet the
demand of team members. By the end of Year 3, we will have equipment enough for 20
subscribers.
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Sales forecast
Our market research, marketing and sales strategy, and financial forecasts let us assume that
CCJs sales will increase according to the following scheme:
Year 1 5 subscribers (each pay 15 000 per year);
Year 2 10 subscribers;
Year 3 20 subscribers.
Table: Profit and Loss account for 3 years
Prep.Phase
Year 1 Year 2 Total (1-3years)
Expenditure Wages 10 000 14 000 26 000Fixed 5 000 7 000 7 000
Other 2 000 3 000 3 000
Marketing 1 000 15 000 17 000
Purchase 2 000 20 000 25 000
Tax 0 15 000 40 000
Total 20 000 59 000 78 000
Income Sales 150 000 300 000Net profit
after tax
0 76 000 222 000 300 000
Investors
capital
20 000 20 000 20 000 60 000
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CCJ will start making profit from Year 2 and by the end of Year 3 it will haveaccumulated
cash GEL 300 000, including the initial investments of GEL 60 000. After three years, the
investor can sell the share of 40 % back to the company and get back theinvested capital
worth of GEL 60 000 plus 40 % of the remaining cash.
Risk AnalysisCCJ is a low risk business as the investment is mostly asked for purchasing tangible assets like
a set of equipment for the office and for team members salary. If we do not reach as
manysales as we plan, we simply will not buy equipment or will not hire many journalists
and the loss will be minimal.
Exit StrategyBesides selling their share back to CCJ by the end of third year for GEL 60 000, theinvestor
can sell their shares (40%) anytime and exit the business. As for the managingteam, we do
not plan to sell our share, but develop and grow our business from Year 4 bygrowing sales
and adding new products.
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