About Karla:

• Karla is a new local media startup from Konstanz.

• In May and June, the founding team raised over €100,000 through crowdfunding.

• Karla is currently building its editorial team, which is set to start work in the fall.

• Karla sees itself as a multimedia city magazine that also enables participation and engages in media education. You can read more details about how this works below.

Karla’s Plans:

• Karla aims to be a multimedia digital online magazine, primarily providing in-depth reports on politics, society, and culture in Konstanz. Content will be delivered through informative articles, multi-perspective dossiers, and audiovisual formats, along with an event calendar, leisure activity guides, and columns from local residents.

• Karla wants to engage the people of Konstanz in conversation and involve them in journalism. The team focuses especially on events: “For example, when you read expert opinions and a week later they are on a panel where you can ask questions, those are moments where one-way communication is broken,” says Karla co-founder Nik Volz. In addition to events, Karla plans to involve non-journalists from the community in focus topics during journalistic production or in workshops where topics are developed together. “It won’t be citizen journalism,” says Nik Volz, “but professionally led journalism that enables participation.”

• Media education is another key pillar for Karla. Initial seminars at the University of Konstanz have already taken place, with more to follow. This is primarily aimed at training the next generation of journalists, but behind-the-scenes formats and joint investigations will also help citizens learn how journalism works.

• The founders have decided to operate as a non-profit. Karla is therefore a non-profit GmbH, with purposes including the promotion of public opinion and education as well as the promotion of art and culture. Funding will come from subscription revenue (Karla will operate behind a paywall) and grants from foundations and donations.

What We’ve Learned:

• Talk to people about your idea: Many tend to wait to launch an idea until it is perfectly polished and formed into a flawless concept. Excessive perfectionism often leads to postponing implementation – or not starting at all. Karla took a slightly different approach. People in Konstanz were able to contribute early and help shape the concept. For example, the idea that Konstanz needed a comprehensive event calendar came directly from the community.

• Consider local conditions: Not every good idea can be applied 1:1 to every city or region. For Karla, it makes perfect sense to operate within the academic environment, for instance through university seminars. Of Konstanz’s 85,000 residents, around 20,000 are students. Moreover, the university is one of the city’s largest employers. In cities with a different population structure, entirely different approaches may be needed. It may seem obvious, but it’s important to focus on local conditions rather than simply copying every good idea.

• Non-profit works with a paywall: Not all journalistic content offered by Karla will be freely accessible. People who want to access it will need a subscription. This is possible as long as the non-profit purposes are still fulfilled. “We want to give our local journalism value. In our view, that includes a paywall – even if you want to provide non-profit journalism,” says Nik Volz.

• Patience is required for non-profit status: The process of achieving recognized non-profit status took several months for Karla. The non-profit GmbH was founded in November 2021, and the tax office officially recognized its non-profit status in May 2022. The Karla founders consulted early with pioneers in non-profit journalism and with the local tax office. “We looked at how they did it, which parts of their statutes we could adopt. We also submitted a preliminary application to the tax office so they could review it without having to immediately approve or reject it,” says Michael Lünstroth.

This case study was first published in our beabee newsletter, where we share hands-on tips and guidance on community journalism every month. Subscribe here: Sign up

Do you have your own experiences or use cases that we should include? Just send an email to svenja.schilling@correctiv.org.