Public Debate and Subscription Access Research

We are planning 5 ordinary public debates for residents in two cities. We want to broadcast the debates on websites to build new content engagement for residents. The debates will concern public life, city development, culture and sport.

Anyone can be a viewer, but a person who will stand out in the subject of public debate cannot be anonymous.We will introduce a subscription-based model to verify the data of people appearing on the Internet. Thanks to this, the participants of the online debate will not be anonymous and the conversation will be bigger.

We want to research whether the subscription model is intended to be used for free open source solutions such as wordpress, or whether it must be implemented as a proprietary management system.

The implementation of the project will help implement programming solutions related to the construction of a verification-based subscription system. Partly, the project will support the organisation of public debates, which will be content initially available only to non-anonymous recipients.

Target group

We have been publishing the local newspaper "Co Tydzień" in Jaworzno for 32 years. At the turn of the 21st century, its readership reached 20% of the city's population, counting 3 readers per one copy sold. Today, readership has fallen to 5%. This is due to the expansion of the Internet and the popularity of smartphones, as well as the aggressive propaganda policy of the city authorities, which publish the free newspaper "PULS Jaworzno" (38,000 copies with a population of 90,000) and finance the second free newspaper "EXTRA Jaworzno" by placing their advertisements there.

The authorities also directly or indirectly coordinate publications on 6 Jaworzno portals. Both local government newspapers and portals are to cut off residents from the information from our newspaper. That is why we have launched a free portal www.jaw.pl in Jaworzno, which allows us to stay in touch with the residents. In order to survive, we need to enable the portal to generate income from residents through paid subscriptions. Only in this case, active residents will not be cut off from independent information. If the project is fully successful, we expect that at least 20% of the most active residents of Jaworzno will have cons

Goals of the project

The goal is to introduce subscription mechanisms that will allow you to reap financial benefits for the survival of the publishing house in the future.

The aim is also to increase the quality of public debate by blocking anonymous speaking in the debate. The quality of the debar can increase the willingness to participate for those involved and responsible.

The goal is also to check to what extent open source solutions are able to perform these tasks. The study consists in confronting a mechanism based on wordpress and a dedicated mechanism written by programmers.

About the media outlet

Wydawnictwo GM sp. z o.o. Since 1991, a publisher of local newspapers, traditional paid paper newspapers. It operates in Jaworzno and Mysłowice. Over the years, it launched two internet portals, jaw.pl and ctmyslowice.pl, and became the broadcaster of a cable television programme in the region.