If you missed Part I of “What the Hell Do I Do Now With Stry?”, you might want to read that first.
So the question for me now is, With what I know right now, what the hell do I really want to do with Stry?
Financially, I’m alright. I have +/-$45,000 left to spend on Stry. I have +/- 5 months to spend it.
So here’s what I want to do:
I want to tell one great story. I want it to be about this country in 2012. I want to call it, “Interconnected America.” I want it to tell the story of how we’re all tied up together in this thing, how immigration in Alabama and health care in Iowa and poverty in Detroit are all intertwined. I want to tell the story of where we, The People, are at this very moment, and what is keeping us from being all that we hope to become.
I’m going to set up a home base somewhere. I’m not sure for how long — maybe just a few months. I’m going to bring out some reporters. And we’re going to get to work.
I promise this much: Stry is going to dig deeply into the problems that Americans are facing in 2012, and Stry is going to bring you stories about the issues that are at the heart of this upcoming election. I promise great reporting and great storytelling. I promise to make you think.
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For me, personally, I also want to prove a few things:
-That I can put together a band of reporters.
-That this team can tell some amazing stories.
-That I can lead this team.
I also want to prove three additional things:
1. That I can syndicate Stry content to publishers. I want to prove that great content deserves a wider audience in print. I want to find the two, three, five publishers who’d like bring Stry to their readers. I want to get my content in their pages.
2. That I can produce an independent print product. I’m not sure if this is a book, or a Kindle Single, or a Stry Magazine. But I want this reporting to find a forever home beyond the web.
3. That I can build a community around these stories. The thing I really want is to put on a live event. I’m thinking of calling them StrySessions. It’d be an evening of discussion about a topic. Stry presents some of our stories — live — and brings in experts to discuss these topics. I want to see the community that Stry builds around this reporting.
So that’s the goal going forward: Tell a great story. Syndicate the content. Produce a printed product. Host a live event.
That’s what I want to do with the money I have left. All I ever really cared about is the storytelling. I want to prove how amazing stories can be, and I want these stories to help others understand our world, and if this doesn’t make me a cent, it won’t bother me at all.
The value is in the doing, and it’s time for this company to step up and do what it was built to do:
Tell great stories.