CCJ Business Plan -- Lali Tsertsvadze

7/28/2019 CCJ Business Plan -- Lali Tsertsvadze

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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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Consulting Citizen Journalist 2013

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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=364


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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.
http://www.ireporter.ge/http://www.ireporter.ge/http://www.ireporter.ge/


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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.

CCJ Business Plan -- Lali Tsertsvadze

Documents

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