, and making one video 45-second video about your local NBA or NHL team. It can be a season preview video or any of the ideas listed above. We will contact you in the app or web site from our Newsroom to set you up from there.

This Dallas Startup Wants to Upend Sports Media – Dallas Business Journal
With the latest upgrades to its mobile app, Fan Media Network, a Dallas-based startup, has almost all the product capabilities it needs to start raising advertising funds and recruiting talent.

The development process has been almost three years in the making.

“We pretty much have everything I always wanted to build,” said Kirk Berridge, CEO of Fan Media Network.

Fan Media Network lets journalists, ex-players and fans upload 45-second reporting clips to its site or app. The mobile journalists makes money three different ways, Berridge said.

First, people who like the reporter’s content can give them money. Second, TV stations or newspapers can buy the clip to broadcast on its station or site. The cost is $50 if the mobile journalist is a fan and $250 if the person is a trained journalist or ex-player, which Fan Media Network gives official status to. The third way is through advertising.

The reporter keeps half, and Fan Media Network keeps half. This model allows people to use Fan Media Network’s platform, but doesn’t mean the company is paying the reporters or investing in expensive equipment.

Before this, the company had a controlled user environment where the talent has mainly been college broadcast and journalism students. Now, Berridge wants to target trained journalists who are being laid off from their jobs.

Sports media, and media in general, has seen tough times as it adjusts to consumers’ new demands. Even big companies like ESPN aren’t immune, as the sports media giant announced earlier this summer it was laying off more than 100 journalists.

“A lot of media companies are laying off journalists, good journalists,” Berridge said. “And this keeps journalism in the hands of trained journalists.”

Right now, Berridge said the company has about 25 trained, official journalists under its belt. By this fall, he wants that number to be 500. Football will be the main driver behind expansion.

Berridge thinks a year from now, newspapers and TV stations will be buying Fan Media Network’s videos and they’ll have a couple “blue chip” advertising brands on board.

Berridge sees most of the company’s revenue in the long haul coming through advertising. In the short term, partnerships with local media outlets will be the revenue driver.

When Berridge spoke with the Dallas Business Journal last year, he said he would close the company’s seed funding round and begin raising funds for Series A in 2017 Q1, but the company’s seed round is still open. Why the shift in strategy?

“We can spend time trying to go raise that kind of money or we can spend time trying to get the company advertiser funded,” he said. “That’s my domain of expertise and I’d rather spend my time doing that.”

Read the full article on the Dallas Business Journal

Mobile Journalists To Earn Money On Their Phones Covering Sports
Fan Media Network now allows mobile journalists, former college players and fans to earn money thru its innovative mobile payments marketplace in its world-class iPhone app.

The social news sports network of mobile phone video correspondents for the top 250 NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS teams is opening an entirely new market of mobile journalism for sports news coverage and continues to take citizen video journalism and social media to an entirely new dimension.

This ecosystem of fan-to-fan and brand-to-fan mobile payments aims to attract trained journalists, including freelance journalists, college broadcast and journalism students and journalists who want to reinvent themselves as mobile journalists as they have been laid off or struggling to get work due to a shift in sports media to bite size, fan-centric video that drives social media commentary.

“Mobile journalism is easy for trained journalists to access. All they need is an iPhone and iMovie video editing app or the Android equivalent. There is no heavy equipment to lug around. They can make and edit videos on their phones and on the go by capturing multiple clips of video footage, then some newswriting and put the clips together with a voiceover or natural sound or music for storytelling of news, games, events and moments. And get paid right on their phones”, said Kirk Berridge, company founder and CEO.

There are three ways mobile journalists, former college players and fans can earn money in the app by providing social news coverage of teams in their area on their phones from their point of view. The first way is a “Buy This Video” feature for newsrooms of local TV stations and newspaper web sites to buy bite size video coverage of news, games, events and moments for $50 from fans and $250 from official correspondents (trained journalists and former college players who Fan Media Network has promoted to official status) and the money goes into the mobile journalist’s/fan’s bank account. The second way is viewers/fans can give money to mobile journalists/fans in the app who they like or like their coverage, from their phone to the mobile journalist’s/fan’s phone and the money goes into their bank account. Think of this as a PBS-type media model for viewer-supported news programs. Mobile journalists/fans can use the money to help buy tickets, transportation, to upgrade their phones, services plans and to help cover other costs. The third way is brands can give influencers money for product placement in videos and or a fan testimonial on-camera on behalf of a brand and give them money from their phone to the fan’s phone and the money goes into the fan’s bank account. This is brand-to-fan mobile payments, a first in the world of advertising.

“Native video ads will be our featured video ad product, not interruptive pre-roll video ads like you see on YouTube and other web sites. Those are so uncreative and annoying and not effective anyway, just repurposed TV ads and not good for the user experience. In addition to building a network of mobile video journalists, we are building a stable of native video advertising makers. As a service to advertisers, our company will identify influencers for brands, then contact the fans and provide them the criteria and instructions to participate and qualify if they wish to accept, and if so and they fulfill the requirements, then they can earn money for producing native video ads. We now have an ecosystem where they can get paid right on their phones from advertisers who can use their corporate credit cards”, said Berridge.

For enabling and operating the mobile payments marketplace, the company shares the revenue 50/50 with the mobile journalists/fans.

The “Buy This Video” feature for local TV stations and newspaper web sites to feature the bite size video coverage on-air and online will include credits for Fan Media Network and the mobile journalist/fan. On average, it costs a local TV station $3,000 to produce a video/story or package as they call it. When considering their costs – reporter salary, TV truck, insurance, gas, expense reimbursements, expensive camera, camera person, other salaries, expensive video editing equipment, video editors (more salaries) and other costs, $50 videos from fans and $250 videos from trained journalists and former players in a “shared economy model” reduces costs, brings back local coverage, offers multiple points of view with the ability to easily get coverage of opposing teams, and helps develop a transactional revenue stream for mobile journalists/fans.

“Our niche is social news coverage for sports. This is going to help attract freelance journalists and other trained journalists to our network. And not just college broadcast and journalism students, but the many trained journalists who are getting laid off at local TV stations, magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and other media companies. And those who can’t get jobs. Local media outlets are providing less coverage and have less resources to cover teams. Beat writers, who typically break the stories in sports, and columnists used to go to team headquarters and practice everyday and on the road to cover the teams but that has been reduced or eliminated in some cities and sports. The local TV stations, newspapers and fans still want the coverage from a local point of view and a much lower cost of $50 a video/story from fans and $250 a video/story from trained journalists will be attractive,” added Berridge.

TV stations and newspapers in the top media markets across the country will promote Fan Media Network to their audience on-air and online to ask for sports video submissions, then the newsroom staff of the TV stations and newspapers can come into Fan Media Network’s app and pick the videos/stories they want to buy. This will drive marketing and revenue for mobile journalists/fans. Fan Media Network app and web site is set up with team channels and city feeds that display the most popular videos/stories as voted by the viewers/fans so it will be easy for newsrooms to find and buy videos. And as videos/stories multiply, they can use Fan Media Network’s search tool to find videos by keywords in headlines and most recent videos in the network.

Sports directors, sports producers and sports editors at local TV station affiliates and newspapers can build a profile in the app for their station or newspaper, then buy videos/stories they can purchase from the app with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover, then get the mp4 file of the video/story to feature on their channels and monetize and keep the revenue.

Trained journalists, former college players and fans can create a profile and activate a free mobile payments account to receive money.

Fan Media Network is a social news sports network of mobile video correspondents for the top 250 NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS teams (Patent Pending).

The web site and app have 250 team channels.

Trained journalists, former college players and fans make 45-second videos/stories on their phones covering their favorite teams in their area from their point of view as social news coverage and compete each season to earn official status and money. Videos feature a simple Yes/No vote and are shared from the app and web site into the News Feeds of Facebook and Twitter as social news coverage.

The mobile payments marketplace is available on the iPhone app to begin, then next will be available on the Fan Media Network web site.

Mobile Journalism Tips and Best Practices
We all have video production and video distribution capabilities with our iPhones. This enables iPhone video journalism or mobile journalism, also called mojo. Yes, I am an Apple enthusiast. And a sports and tech media enthusiast. Before we discuss tips and best practices for mobile journalism, let’s look at some recent historical inventions that got us here. The iPhone was released in 2007 but the first iPhones did not have video recording capabilities. In 2005, I had the first Nokia phone with video recording capabilities and was among the first people in the world to make selfie videos. MySpace was the social network of choice back then. YouTube just came out. The way was starting to get paved for mobile journalism. In 2007, citizen video journalism was pioneered by CNN with iReport. And The Weather Channel followed suit shortly after. Both empowered viewers to upload videos and some were featured on-air. These videos were made with digital cameras or camcorders, not phones. In 2008, Facebook hit pop culture phenomenon status (it used to require a college email address to have an account but they expanded to everyone), and web 2.0 enabled sharing, and shortly after, the News Feeds were released in 2009 as a new product/feature within Facebook that replaced your Wall or Profile as the place where people were spending most of their time. Everything now came to people in their News Feeds. The App Store opened up to developers and apps became a focus. In 2010, Flip became a hot thing to have and it was all about people who liked to make videos but it didn’t make a phone call so they killed it. Then smart phones became ubiquitous and the video cameras became better. Then the Wi-Fi problem had to be solved at stadiums and arenas, which for the most part, it has. At this point, now anyone can be in the media. I am not talking about bloggers. Anyone and their grandma can blog. That is not unique content. I am talking about mobile video journalists. People prefer to watch video than read. And there is something about being on-camera. It makes people more accountable for their behavior and to present the truth. Bloggers and people who hide behind fake names on the Internet and on message boards and people making comments on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are quick to be opinionated, critical and abusive and spread stuff that may not be factual. Traditional media is no longer what we rely on or pay attention to. People are tired of talking heads, sensationalism and overproduction. Social media empowered people to follow who they want to follow. When it comes to sports we all like our favorite reporters, broadcasters and commentators for one of three reasons: the way they look, the way they sound, or what they say. And we don’t like certain on-camera personalities for one of the same three reasons: the way they look, the way they sound or what they say.

People Get Their News on Social Media

Knowing that people are watching less TV and they get their news on social media, when producing videos/stories on your iPhone, keep in mind that short, quick videos are best. This means 45-seconds to 30-seconds is optimal. People want bite size coverage of news, games, events and moments in their News Feeds. That is enough. Then they want to move on. In this amount of time you can put together and edit 8-10 clips of footage for your video/story. This makes the coverage dynamic with multiple transitions and keeps the viewer’s attention. We call this social news coverage.

Mobile Journalism Tips and Best Practices

First, it is important to hold your phone horizontal so the footage is optimized for Internet video players. We have all seen a video on the Internet that is shot holding the phone vertically because it has those big black edges and the video is very small. Hold the phone horizontally. If you have good footage, you can turn it into a great video/story. There is an app to help edit video by putting multiple clips together in order to tell a story. iMovie from Apple is a great app that is easy to use. You can put music behind your video footage and do a voiceover to narrate and tell a story. This is all you need. You can easily learn how to turn down and adjust the volume of the natural sound, music and voiceover. Sound quality and lighting are important. Lighting is most important because iMovie allows a mobile journalist to do a voiceover, and that can solve any sound quality issue. Natural sound from the video footage can be used or turned down or completely turned off for a voice over. For storytelling, in addition to ordering your clips, journalism and newswriting have a simple formula. There is the lead, the bridge and the body. This is how news stories are written and video journalism can be produced. The lead is what the story is about. This is the who, what, when and where. The bridge transitions the story to the body of the story where the journalist goes into detail. A mobile journalist can open or close their video coverage by saying their name, name of the city they are in and the name of their network. For instance, this is Kirk Berridge in Dallas for Fan Media Network.

Kirk Berridge is the founder and CEO of Fan Media Network. Berridge is a leader in mobile journalism for sports in the U.S. He has been an entrepreneur for 13 years.

Mobile Journalism For Sports in the U.S.
Mobile journalism is news gathering, reporting and storytelling that is produced, edited and published on a mobile phone. Why haven’t media companies in the U.S. shifted to mobile journalism? The state of the art of media isn’t so state of the art anymore. Who needs big, expensive professional cameras, and a camera person, and a TV truck, and post production facilities with a special editing room, and expensive editing equipment, and studios, and microphones, and satellites? It’s called an iPhone and iMovie video editing app. Thank you Apple! You can make and edit videos on your phone. We’re talking multiple clips of footage, music or natural sound and a voice over for storytelling. Mobile journalism is a disruptive, low cost media model.

This is bite size video coverage of news, games, events and moments made by the fans. Sports fans are already on the scene by the thousands, they are eyewitnesses and they are everywhere. You don’t have to deploy people or any expensive equipment. This is fan behavior that is already happening. Fans make videos/stories on their phones and chronicle what they see, who they are with, who is there, their point of view, fan interviews, commentary, and criticism. The iPhone is more than a phone. It is a computer. We’re talking HD video, video editing and distribution, everything anyone needs to get in the game of media.

A Shift Has Occurred in Media

The old, tired, expensive media model called TV is being overtaken by video on our mobile phones, social media, and citizen video journalism. NFL TV ratings are down. Even soccer TV ratings in Europe are down. Over produced, sensationalism has turned off many sports fans. And the ultimate commodity is attention. People don’t want to sit around and watch entire games for three hours. Less is best, especially with young people. They are fine to watch a short recap, preferably in their News Feeds and move on. They are also fine to get perspective from their friends, other sports fans or non-traditional media types, definitely not talking heads or so called experts. ESPN and FOX Sports announced budget cuts, buyouts and layoffs in the past year or so. People are cord-cutting, cord-shaving and millennials don’t even get cable or a TV in the first place. People are watching less TV. They get their news on social media and rely less and less on traditional media and it’s never going back. Sports fans now prefer bite size video coverage of news, games, events and moments in their News Feeds by non-traditional media types and fan point of view.

Leagues, teams and broadcast media companies want to keep the old model as long as possible because the leagues, who work for the team owners, get billions in rights fees from broadcast media to be able to produce, distribute and sell advertising during the broadcasts and the leagues share the rights fees with the team owners. This is their biggest revenue stream. Team owners also get local TV rights fees from regional sports networks and they get to keep all of this revenue. And most big team sponsors use their TV ad budgets to fund their sponsorship deals. Team owner’s valuations are based on the size of the TV market they play in. This is why the Los Angeles Clippers were acquired for $2B and the Milwaukee Bucks were purchased around the same time for $550MM. Los Angeles is a bigger, more valuable TV market than Milwaukee.

Broadcast media companies are married to this model as they have long-term multi-billion dollar rights fees agreements in place with leagues that go out 10 years. TV advertising market is a $46B annual business. Though online video, mobile and social advertising are the biggest growth sectors in all of advertising, TV advertising is still the driver. Even advertising agencies want to keep the old model as long as possible. Some average TV commercials cost $250k to produce. You can produce a movie on an iPhone so you can produce a TV commercial on an iPhone for next to nothing. Fan testimonials and product placement is easy on an iPhone from influencers. This is called native video advertising. And high-end video production is possible to create ads on an iPhone. Ad agencies production departments will go out of business as native video advertising overtakes pre roll video and TV and traditional media continue to shrink. Native video advertising is a $3B business today and projected to be a $38B in a few years. Pre roll video is interruptive to the user experience and ineffective for brands anyway. People hate pre roll. There is lots of money at stake across the entire food chain of sports media – leagues, teams, broadcast media and ad agencies will hold on to the existing model. Facebook and Google have been the best at monetizing mobile. They get the first and the most digital ad dollars, period.

Mobile Journalism is Big in Europe, Not in the U.S.

Leading media companies like BBC and Al Jazeera deploy mobile journalism. Europe has historically been first and big in mobile, whereas the U.S. has been more advanced in Internet. This dates back to the mid to late 1990s during the dot com boom. The U.S. really pioneered the Internet and this historically has been the focus here. Europe was ahead of the world in mobile. Remember Nokia was a European company that once dominated the world in mobile. Then Apple invented the iPhone in 2007 and finally the U.S. and companies eventually focused more on mobile. Facebook went public in 2012 and most of their users and revenue was from desktop and nearly had no revenues from mobile and quickly shifted their focus and had significant users and ad revenues on mobile in 2013 and now this accounts for most of their business.

During all of this time Europe has stayed focused on mobile and that is why media companies over there have embraced and pioneered in mobile journalism and the U.S. is behind. U.S. media companies are trying to hold on to the old, tired, expensive media model because they make so much money on TV advertising and pay so much money in sports media rights fees. Their entire businesses depend on it. They do not want to shift to a much lower cost media model of mobile journalism until they are forced to or figure out revenues, which they will.

They say people will spend five years of their lifetime on social media. Social media had more impact on this year’s election than traditional media. People get their news on social media. Twitter controls breaking news. Facebook is massive and their distribution is unmatched. YouTube is the second biggest search engine and 136 hours of YouTube video is shared every minute on Facebook alone.

There is a mobile journalism company in the U.S. focused on pro and college sports called Fan Media Network. The network provides social news coverage of teams across the NCAA, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS. The web site and iPhone app have 250 team channels. This is 45-second videos/stories from fan point of view. Videos are shared from the web site and iPhone app into the News Feeds of Facebook and Twitter as social news coverage. Fan Media Network give sports fans organization and purpose with competition (viewer voting) and incentives to cover their favorite teams in their area on their phones and compete each season to earn official status, money and media credentials.

Fan Media Network is the first media company in the U.S. and the world to be solely focused on mobile journalism for news gathering, production and distribution by mobile phones. And the niche is social news coverage.

The company is taking citizen video journalism, which was pioneered in 2007 by CNN iReport and The Weather Channel, and social media to another dimension and social news coverage is the focus.

Kirk Berridge is the founder and CEO of Fan Media Network. Kirk has several industry firsts in digital media and sports sponsorship. He has been an entrepreneur for 13 years.