Revitalizing Local Media: Fundraising and Community Engagement

Beacon (00:02.2)
Welcome back to The Bridgerton Beacon. In this episode, we're going to feature a conversation between Beacon founder Meg McCormick Horner and her producer, Tom Ritter, as they discuss expanding the channels of fundraising for local nonprofit media with respect to the community being able to get involved with projects like memory podcasts or sponsoring a Bulldog where we work with local area youth in media production or sponsoring The Bridgerton Beacon in general.

to shine a light on the local stories and members of the community that make Bridgton and the greater Bridgton area a great place to live. here's Tom, the producer and Mike McCormick Horner talking about ways that the beacon is going to interact with the community this year. All right. So I'm redoing the, we have a few fundraising channels for the Bridgton Beacon that we certainly want to focus on. And we've got some neat stuff that let's

audience or supporters interact in new ways. So just from top to bottom, we've got this sort of general fund, which there's a campaign, we have links on the site, we have give butter where people is that's kind of like the GoFundMe style vendor that helps us collect and keep track. And so that's on the website, we're adding both the sort of sponsor a bulldog program that we were doing.

that we initiated with the Cultural and Heritage Commission and we recorded with Rashaun and we've done some of those. So that's where any individual or business can contribute to that project specifically to support us guiding a local, area youth through the pre-production, production and publication steps and all the software involved and essentially teach them about media related to whatever story it was we do with them. And so that's a really great program.

The ability for somebody to put a little skin in the game to literally put a local kid through a one-on-one course where they're helping to produce media that we actually use on the Bridgestone Beacon. Right, because we're going to continue to do that. That's going to be an ongoing project of ours. And an example of that is anybody can Google Bridgestone Beacon Riverside Renaissance or Bridgestone Beacon RRCA Arts and you'll see the episode we did with Rashaun.

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And finally, there's a, another essentially product slash publishing tool for the beacon. is memory podcasts, which is a potentially wonderful tie in for local history and local beacons of the community. And that's the ability for someone to sponsor a one-on-one podcast with a local area elder or somebody who's got great stories, but essentially you're picking a person and we're going to.

record their memories and make sure that whatever perspective it is that made you want to pick them to begin with, that we memorialize that, we'll publish it on the Beacon. It'll be a great sort of keepsake and legacy piece for anybody who's a loved one of that person long term. And that's a, you know, a very sort of bite-sized way for somebody to contribute to local nonprofit media and also shine a light on somebody that they might want to personally recommend.

for a little bit of that Beacon Sparkle and we get great stories out of it. Yeah, I mean, think that new project, the Memory Podcast, is really an exciting new feature for the Bridgerton Beacon. And for anybody who is listening to this in terms of just clarifying what our vision is for that project, is that something where the individual who is

contributing to the beacon to be able to, as you said, spotlight on a family member, an elder in their community. Would that person be conducting the interview or could they have the option to have you or I do that? What were you thinking about? I think we're better, I think we're probably better serving their dollar as a contribution to the beacon if we do it.

as the host ourselves, simply because we're practiced enough to avoid any pitfalls that someone who's conducting that process for the first time is very likely to discover, you know, if we do a handful of these, someone will make the same mistakes that we made early on in podcasting. And we do, I should further that by saying, however, I am working on a kit based on the initial people we work with. And the initial people we work with, have said at a

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very promotional price point to get some examples in, I think it's so wonderful. And when people see it, there'll be no shortage of people who want to do them or support or share a memory podcast. I go through half a dozen or 10 of those. It will take the rough edges off a kit I've already started that would allow anyone with an iPhone or a Android to really produce the same type of effort. And whether they do that with the Bridgeton Beacon or not, if they just wanted to

get a loved one recorded just for their own sake. We're putting together a package that shares the tools we know about and the ways that they can make that happen, you know, within reach of a typical user. You know, if you have a smartphone and a computer, you can make a really great legacy podcast for one of your elder loved ones, a friend of the family, whoever. And I am putting the final touches on that. So that might be the kind of thing that we put out. And potentially it's a suggested donation where people can even access that.

potentially for free if we're not doing any of the work and then a suggested donation and also if they wanted to share that with the beacon and get it published there's the potential that could be the case. So they would have the option to permit us to air that on the beacon or alternatively just keep it private for their own circle family members because you might have some people that want to think so. Yeah, but they might not want it.

produced and published to the masses, although there might be other people who say, yeah, this is really important and we want to share it. That topic of... And with audio, Meg, with audio, they might be more open because even then we'll be in a situation where we can say, can we use clips that keep the name out of it? Because 99 % of the recording, they won't be using their own name. So even if we can repurpose some of that for South Jersey stories, if they don't want the name out there, we don't need to use the name.

but we would just love to use the audio. know, somebody telling a story about a landmark or an event in history that they were there for in South Jersey, if they don't want us to shine a big light and make it all about that person, it can be totally anonymous how we publish it. And I think those would be really interesting. anything to get more information and stories out would sort of be the way we would lean. Clearly, if I'm

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considering giving away a kit that'll let people do their own for their own purposes. I mean, it's such an important, you know, that idea, I was going to say, of an oral history, right? Primary source material, like you said, interviewing a grandparent or an aunt or uncle about, you know, something specific that they witnessed, that they saw, that they did, that they can share. It provides value, obviously, to the family member who wants to preserve that memory, but it also provides a great

contribution to the community to be able to have that, right? Whether it's just the audio or whether it's the audio and the video. And so that's something too, as an option to give folks. Some people might be very willing to record a phone call, but they really don't want their face out there, right? So- Well, I was going to say, I don't see any video at all to start with because there's no way to control for people. So when I was saying that we can use audio that-

is anonymous, that just means a clip that doesn't have any personally identifying information in it. that reminds me of what NPR does, right? NPR, that story core. you know, I listened to NPR, I've listened to it for a long time and you'll hear clips from their story core programming. And I believe, because I had looked into this years and years ago, before the Bridgerton Beacon even started, and never unfortunately followed through. And I regret that now, but

I think that you could reach out to them, they'd send you the equipment, you could record with a family member, you send it back. And then NPR just produces discrete clips from that recording. And I don't believe they even give the person's name. But what they then do is they preserve it through the Library of Congress. And that's something I want to look into on the Library of Congress. Well, I was going to say the Millville Library. We could start there.

We'll there. We're the Bridgerton Library. We'll work our way. yeah, Bridgerton Library. What am I talking about? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, but these are all great ideas and they start by gauging interest in the community. And that's what we're doing right now. Yeah. It's all the same sort of feel good, down home, corny goodness that we love to begin with. Yeah, but it's not really corny. mean, who wouldn't want to have, I would love right now to have an audio recording of a conversation.

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with one of my grandparents. Who wouldn't give the world for that? That's in the first paragraph of my service plan for this is that very, you know, while you can preserve the memories that matter most and the voices that you most want to hear, it's crazy that people don't, you know,

It's crazy. I, when this came to light and I thought, what a great idea. hadn't found out that people were already doing it. And, but once you've had the idea, you're like, well, why haven't we just been recording grandmom in the kitchen for the last 10 years? What is wrong with us? She's every other weekend. She's in there, you know, yelling at mom about this recipe or that we, should collect all that very important culinary knowledge and start grandmoms, you know, sort of legacy podcasts, but it's un

believable how obvious of an idea is once it's been in your head once you're like How did it even take me that long to think of it? And how did it the person who knew it before me came up with it? They should have had it way before like this is so obvious considering what we've had in our pocket For well over two decades now, right? Right. And I mean and it's a great way to also support the brichton beacon while you do it Yeah, it's kind of a win-win for everyone very and and so there's a way to elaborate that on

as well. not making any money on a memory podcast through the Bridgerton Beacon at any of the price points I'm considering once this is live. But the idea is that any activity, we get such great response that we should not necessarily look to grow by any method other than putting more skin in the game and looking for greater response. it's and this is a lightweight way to expand production.

to lots and lots and lots of lots of members of the community who think they've got a gem to talk about. And that's all this has been about from the beginning, is give us a gem to talk about, whether it's, know, when crabs are in season, who's got them? You know, the Bridgeton Invitational Baseball Tournament, the Minerva Fire Company evolving into Cumberland Mutual Fire, or Cumberland Mutual Insurance, rather. So I mean, there's a million of those we haven't uncovered, and it's like us giving everybody

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in the Bridgton area, sort of a metal detector of their own to say, this is good. This is a good nugget. Let's funnel it into the Bridgton beacon by activity alone and not charging them an arm and a leg for that activity. Well, right. mean, that's, that's the whole reason why to apply 1c3 nonprofit status is because we want any contributions that anyone makes to the Bridgton beacon to go right back into producing great content.

for the community. you know, I'm a member of a Facebook group called Bridgerton Memory Lane, and it's so just wonderful to share from people about their memories related to the Bridgerton area. And while we also focus on the here and now, the past is such an important part of that. This is kind of a way for us at the Bridgerton Beacon to join those two things, right? Past and the present. And like you said,

document and preserve a memory. I'm really, really excited about this. think that in addition to the sponsor Bulldog project that we started last year, this is maybe one of my, one of my most favorite things that we're doing right now. Yeah, it's my favorite. It's my favorite. I did speak with some Cumberland County area hospice professionals, people who run hospice. And they, I said, Hey, I'm putting, I didn't give them a specific pitch, but I said, Hey, I'm,

doing this through the beacon in South Jersey. It seems like a wonderful legacy tool. And I sent that out to people I know because the first email I sent was, like, I think this is such a near and dear kind of thing. I want you to evaluate the way I'm presenting it because I don't want to seem like in any way like it's, you know, it's

It's a money making scheme or something. But I'm so in love with the idea that I get excited about it. I, so I literally the first people I shared it with, was like, Hey, just screen this. Cause I'm just so excited and I'm afraid it's going to sound like I'm selling something that's too good to be true. Well, no, mean, we're not, again, we're nonprofit. We're trying to provide the service to the community. you know, we, we are presenting it to those that are interested in it and if they are wonderful.

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they aren't understand. So I think there are a lot of different groups that might be interested in sharing this among their members. And I think it's just a great thing. Yeah, it's to my knowledge, it's going to be the sort of the lightest, easiest way to get plugged in to a podcast situation. And you know, have a bunch of highlight clips the next week to share with the family is, you know, get Uncle Bob into the pipeline as a Bridgestone Beacon memory podcast and

We'll be chomping at the bit and we've got really great tools for prepping for those. You know, we collect a little bit of information when they register, but all we need is a little information for us to be able to prompt them and really drive the conversation. They don't need to worry about scripting or too much planning. It's just bring your memory and your personality and let rip with what you think is interesting. And we were very good at just letting you roll.

And if you run out of steam on one area, we know more than anybody a real easy way to get you to keep talking just in a slightly different direction, especially because we're coming into the room with area history, area economics, area demographics. So all they need to do is provide a little information to us. And we get immediately sort of clued into what's going on and can drive it from there. Yeah. I mean, what we may want to consider, I know that you

You know, you had mentioned a couple minutes ago that you or I or someone else on behalf of The Beacon would be kind of the interviewer. You know, we may want to consider being the facilitator of a conversation between grandparent, grandchild, aunt and uncle, niece and nephew, older person, younger person. That way you've got kind of that dynamic between the two that might make it even more special, but we can kind of.

try that out as we go. I think I think there's a legit, sorry for interrupting. If you're going to say the logistics will be easy. Is it going to be on, on service like Riverside? Yeah. So here's, here's, I would, my, the more people you add to the conversation, every person doubles your chance that some shit's wrong for that call. And the call is going to have to be canceled. Every time you add a customer,

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A whole new customer, is any participant, their audio and everything. What's the success rate for cold off the street participation in a podcast is what concerns me because there's always issues and it's going to be a whole different customer group.

that isn't necessarily doing it from their business desk, is what we're used to. So I'd be real, I'm more hesitant to do that. And also my thing was like, if I'm going to CBS, I want Charles Kuralt or I don't want Grant. I want the local reporter on the Bridgerton Beacon. That's the legit version of getting interviewed. Like then grandmom was on the Bridgerton Beacon recording grandmom with a nephew.

I think has a lot less value. You can do and also go do that today with your iPhone you idiots. Like why would you pay us for that? Yeah well I mean I don't know I'd be willing to see what people who listen to this think. I'd love to get feedback from the community on that. I I wouldn't necessarily know what to ask a person that might end up being a little nugget that is special to the family down the road as they listen to it in future years but that.

That's why we get a little bit of information at registration. that's required. so walk me through what you're thinking. Well, so based on that information, if they give me certain decades, if they give me certain schools, certain work experience, where do you think I turn next with that to make it valuable to us to make it valuable to them? I turn around and turn on about 14 different AI programs and say,

I've got a 68 year old person who grew up in this town during this era who is, is not in a family, who is, is not a working professional, who is, is not a grandparent, who is, is not a sports fan, who is, is not that much and cut it off there with some AI tools. And it's, it's not going to say, Hey, what's your favorite sandwich? It's going to say, they grew up in this area during that decade. Do they remember this ice cream shop?

Beacon (18:41.74)
That's so much better than you or I could do off the top of our head to begin with. And so part of hiring the Bridgerton Beacon to be your host is the fact that we've got two years of AI experience into a lot of the stuff we already do with prepping for whatnot. I've sent you not much lately, but I've sent outlines before of like, hey, here's a topic. They're unbelievably extensive and would allow us to

bar none, at least research that topic further in a very expeditious and educated way, or rely on it almost entirely if it's something we've tested before as part of a procedure. So that's what I was thinking is, and also the family member is going to ask the obvious questions. I think the value we bring to the table is a question that elicits who they are and what they're all about and what their experience was. But if it's a question you didn't expect to hear, I think that resonates with a lot more sort of volume.

It seems to me that people will literally say, I never would have thought to ask that. What an interesting question. Although it may also be helpful to have a questionnaire that the Hello, my baby. Hello, my darling. Is sponsoring this. Phil's out. Meg Horner disappeared. tidbits to I'm the new editor in chief of the Bridgeton Beacon. Apparently there's stuff blown around in my yard. Tornado today.

expect Meg to rejoin the conversation presently. And we're back. yeah. Just finishing up on the value of like, think having questions that are kind of out of left field, which aren't hard to come up with. Like I said, if you name an ice cream place that Grandma hasn't thought of in 50 years, home run. Like how many? So I think you're really taking your chances on the spectrum of quality of discourse when compared to that by just making it an open.

I think that's a different product. don't think that's a Bridgestone beacon. think that's like Bridgestone's chatter or something. It's straight up. You know, we can produce for people and it can go on a page, but if it's just for fun, it's just a different tone, I think, than, you know, having bespectacled Meg Horner or Calvary Hat-Wearing Tom Ritter or whoever we add in who has those tools at their disposal for

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making sort of a robust showing if, if. Because I don't think there's much prompting required most of the time. But if and when. was just, I was just going to say that several years ago, and I won't say the name of the company so I don't run into any kind of copyright problems here, but several years ago for Christmas, I purchased something for my dad and it essentially sent him writing prompts

every week, think, for a period of time. And he would, you know, type in the answers. A memory from high school or, you know, your favorite ice cream store, that kind of thing, like you're saying. And he would type it in and he could upload some pictures. And at the end of the time frame, they put it together in a book. Is it Rimento? What's that? Rimento? No, different one. I'll tell you after the call.

unless you want to just bleep it. in any event, my thought was we could have similar type prompts. Well, that's literally exactly what we're talking about. Okay. Except they're, they're customized based on what some input that they give us when they register. Then we just schedule for a week later. And it's not like we're setting them up for ongoing. I just need to run something. I need to take that info, drop it into something that I have formatted to process it.

that info into 30 questions. You might only need two questions. But it'd be a hoot just to even send them away with those questions that I think some of them are so cool. Right. So if this is an audio only product, is this, I mean, one of the easiest ways to do it, just throwing it out there, is how we started the Birch & Beacon, which is recording a phone call. It could be as simple as that if you're thinking audio only. Potentially, sure. Yeah. So.

just something to consider as we develop this. I mean, ultimately... Imagine that. You've got a call scheduled with the bridge. That's so radio. I really like that about it. It's so radio that it hurts. So I would love to do phone interviews and we can do that very easily. Yeah. Right. And then the person who wants to have this, who's given a contribution so that they can have a kind of a more structured interview with a family member, you know,

Beacon (23:26.478)
could then receive either that kind of disc or link or however you want to provide it to them for their keepsake forever, again, they could then thereafter ask for it to be produced on the Bridgerton Beacon, perhaps under a separate link or separate heading on our page, obviously with their permission, or a portion thereof.

Well, there's a bunch of offshoot options there, including turning it into written text in a hardcover book. So that whole workflow is pretty much where it's headed. But the light, easy sort of phone call to either go through the beacon or go, you know, have them do it just on whatever some sort of side thing we can do. The upsell from there is if you want it on five USBs, do you want it on a website? Do you, if we have to start

taking care of hosting, you make sure there's shiny delivery of some keepsakes, we can merge that out and nobody's gonna complain, because wrap it into the total value, it's still preposterous what we're doing for what we're charging. So I think those are great ways to sort of add icing to the cake and say, okay, great, know, the memory podcast is this, which is positively ridiculous. And then if you wanna add five or 10 USBs, if you want it, you know, hosted on the beacon on its own sort of a little...

page that will send you a link to. We do that all day long. It is a little work. It would be great value to them because they don't have to worry about things like YouTube and what's going to work, what's going to not. Do we have to keep hosting something? Did Spotify get bought by YouTube? Do we have to move to a new host? And then of course, you can always, as a separate through niche podcast, create a private family podcast for a family that's private to them. I mean, you've done that through for companies, right?

Sure. If it's Jersey through niche podcast, not the brief Bridgeton Beacon necessarily, but that they're all things that are possible. That's basically what a memory podcast is if you're not in New Jersey. So I've got 49 other states. So I think if we're getting good stories in New Jersey, I anything I can do to funnel them through the beacon seems like getting double the win. Well, because I might value. I mean, and we might still we might still publish them. You know, I was thinking maybe memory podcasts.

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might be the venue which will already be built because I'm going to have just regular private customers build and build and build a channel. So maybe the beacon doesn't even have to. And maybe there's even more value if we mix them into the public, what do YouTube or whatever you call it over there as the just sort of fun one, not the official bridged in beacon. You just made me think of that, that might be a good way to partner and not have to build another whole channel.

Right. Kind of things. So forgive me for jumping in. I needed to get that documented before I went out and started buying domain names and building new websites. Sorry. Yeah. What this all makes me think of though is, you know, as you know, I'm working on the Paul Hunsberger off the cuff project. And for any listeners who may not know what that is, Paul Hunsberger, 50, 60 year old radio host on WSNJ interviewed

13,000 people. I had interviewed son Dan several years ago. It one of my first audio interviews on the Bridgerton Beacon. I think we try to kind of mirror or pattern what Paul Hunsberger did so many years ago by interviewing luminaries, visionaries, people in the area. Long and short of it is, was able to track down his granddaughter out in Texas and she very kindly went to a storage unit and found 1,700

photos of folks that he had interviewed, small fraction of all of those folks that he interviewed, and an even smaller fraction of audio tapes that I have actually sitting right here that I'm working on. We're trying to gather more. So many people, and I put this out on Bridge to Memory Lane, so many people are like, oh yeah, my aunt was interviewed or my grandfather was interviewed. We don't, how wonderful would it be if we had that audio now? We have some of it.

thanks to his granddaughter sending it to us. And that'll be the subject of a much bigger project in the next year or two. But what if we had more of it? And this is a way to preserve and memorialize interviews among the folks that our listeners think should be interviewed, not just who I or you go out and interview. So the beauty of what Paul Hunsberger did was

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He interviewed everyone from Liberace to Olympic athletes to many local housewives, right? Everyone's story is important and worthy of preserving and sharing. And that's what we do at the Bridgerton Beacon. And that's what this memory podcast opportunity will give. Everybody's story is important and worthy of preserving. you've mentioned

the Hunsberger project. So then I'm going to go ahead and take it a step further and say that we're also going to be building on give butter and within our beacon donate page because that Hunsberger project isn't a like a one time write a story. The Hunsberger project is four figures worth of imagery that can go into a database, a folder, if you will. But we're going to use in advance to just sticking it in storage.

we're going to intricately code these images so that we can associate them with the time and place and people and topics and sentiment that they were associated with in whatever future, previous life they had to whatever extent we can find information about them. So a picture that brings up so-and-so with Paul Hunsberger, there is more than likely going to be information about so-and-so. So it'll broaden

the depth of information that we're writing about and producing just by having had a picture of that person. So our ability to take these, Hunsberger collection, I may coin it, the Hunsberger collection, I'm so delighted. Yeah, but it is. That the actual work around making that an incredibly efficient usable tool, meaningful for the Bridgerton Beacon in that the Bridgerton Beacon could potentially have a hundred extra stories next year.

based merely on the presence of this Hunsberger photo archive driving interest and driving editorial. So we're going to have another little sliver of our donate section specifically to that. There's going to be some really cutting edge hosting software processes with that. It's not going to break the bank, but it's not the kind of thing we thought of when we founded the Bridgerton Beacon, when we founded the Bridgerton Beacon.

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Perfect example is most of these photos, and I'm in the process of cataloging them right now, I have a name on the back. And so, you know, the local photographer, Connolly Moye, who took all these photos had written the names on the back with a date. Several did not have the names. And so I'm going to be trying to figure out who those unknown individuals are. But for example,

One of the photos that didn't have a name I was able to determine is Diane Kingel Johnson, who was Miss Bridged in the late 50s and 60s. My mom thought that might be who it was. I ended up going on Genealogy Bank and I found a picture of Diane Kingel Johnson and was able to say, that's who that is in this photo. And so now I'm able to tell who she is and I can, as I'm cataloging it, properly identify her.

But what I think you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, is that now we could link that photo. Unfortunately, I don't think I have her audio interview, but we could link that photo that I do have with stories about her that we pull off of the Bridgerton Evening News or other area newspapers from that time. And so we're building this basically, you know, a database, so to speak. Is that right? So that anybody then can log in, can...

search your name and get links to all of these things that we found through our research. That's a basically what you're saying. What you described is one thing we could do, although there's other processes we could do. For example, once we have the name, there's a great likelihood we can find success associating an era with that name because Bridgerton is not Manhattan. So if you get a Hinkle Johnson name, you're going to be able to at least narrow it down.

pretty quickly to the point where potentially outside of Genealogy Bank, that we're using general AI database and large data models to do the research, not just Genealogy Bank, although Genealogy, we don't have to build to to connect to those models today. We have to build to connect to Genealogy Bank.

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I have a feeling I'd want to read the terms and conditions of Genealogy Bank before I start automating any processes that mine its content. but perhaps we get a family member who is in the area, or not in the area, quite frankly, who wants to call in and talk to us about Awesome. Well, let's, what about, why don't we borrow an idea from Big Milk and start just any, start building a folder of people you don't know and let's throw them up on the screen.

in the beginning of the bridge to beacon and say, we're attempting to inventory Paul Hunsburgers. So we can crowdsource the Hunsberger project to some extent, would think, or possibly a blog post would be better because then people could comment and forgive me. was going to draw on a Bridgeton memory lane Facebook page because it did, they, that group did seem to have a perfect. The way to do it then is to post it on the Bridgeton beacon blog.

And that's the link you post on Bridged in Memory Lane. Okay. Well, we can start that. Yeah. Cause then we're building the same repository. All every contribution becomes searchable for future purposes. Right. And I should say that part of this project is not just cataloging, but it's also scanning these photos in, in a high quality manner so that we can share them online. Right. Yeah. It's astonishing.

The quality is unbelievable. had no hope. I was happy to get these pictures and I was excited. Yeah, like great. Let's see them. You know, we're definitely going to use them. But the quality that was delivered in the one sample I've seen is incredible. So I would use it in video in a way I wouldn't use many legacy pictures in video, but my goodness gracious, these are, these are solid.

And then, yeah, to your point, the process is then you have to get them extensively meta-tagged so that they stay in a drive that's accessible to our editorial, but also our AI. Because when we're making a video, the video will know if we need backup images that are from a certain era, if they're from agriculture, if they're from the Bridgerton High School football team, or if they're from

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the Bridgeton Invitational Baseball Tournament. So as long as they're socked away and the data is clean, tagged, it plugs into some very high-end processes just by existing. Right. I mean, that's something that if someone wants to contribute, because this is a big project in and of itself. And I'm going to be hiring some part-time employees with the approval of the Bridgeton Beacon Board of Directors.

to assist in this process. But if that's something that's near and dear to any of our listeners' hearts and they want to contribute specifically to that project so that, you know, just to help fund those costs, because it's big undertaking, we can certainly set that up through our homepage. I mean, ultimately, I'd to do a documentary on Paul Hunsberger, because I think that what he did over all of those years is what

you know, what we're trying to do now. can say with confidence that if we, if we build some information about Paul Hunsberger in a great big giant folder, if we've got imagery and if we start to build some content around that imagery that's original, that we can put out a, a documentary very, very efficiently after a couple years of sort of just collecting Paul Hunsberger into that project and all that was around him.

the ability to then analyze. it's just collect, collect, collect. And then it becomes very powerful to execute. Whereas if you're like, let's write a book on Paul Hunsberger. What should chapter one be? I would say, who cares? Let's collect as much information and dump it into one place because AI is so good at helping us figure out where we should prioritize, how we should maybe outline the delivery and then execute on the outline of the delivery. Without that, we're not putting anything out because there's only a few of us at the Bridgeton Beacon.

Well, right. Both of which, we all have other full-time jobs. The beauty of what we're doing though, too, is to link it to the present by calling on members of the community that are here now living that want to share their memories of that timeframe. Right. And so the story is about them now here now. Right. And all the other people that are in the area doing great things. So we can.

Beacon (37:39.694)
You know, it's that's the beauty of what we're doing in this project is tying the past to the present and maybe the future. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah. So there's a bunch of different links you can follow and a bunch of different little niche projects people can support from cool stuff like digitization and AI of old, old, old media from Bridgeton or sponsoring a local youth who wants to get involved in some sort of new media.

Or just a general fun where, keep going out there and interviewing farmers and, you know, oyster men and brewers and whoever the heck else is mixing it up in the greater Brichton area. Yeah. And if I think that if there's anything that people want to hear us talk about or look into or anyone that they want us to interview, remember you can go right on your phone on brichtonbeacon.com. There's that send a voicemail on the side. Send us a message.

or can just email us, brichtonbeacon.gmail.com. You know, let us know what you want to hear. mean, there's no newspaper that focuses exclusively on Bridgestone. We're trying to fill that gap. So let us know, right? Any listeners, let us know what you want to hear. A hundred percent. And if you haven't hit the subscribe button on YouTube and then click the little bell underneath the subscribe button. So you actually get alerts when we post new content. That's a great way to help us grow.

All right. Nice chatting with you today. Yeah, good stuff. I'll get to work on some of that and we'll have all those links set up as we put this video out and tell people what's going on. Outstanding. All right. Talk to you soon. Talk soon. Bye.

There's a couple great ways to support the Bridgestone Beacon. You can go to bridgestonebeacon.com slash support for a number of options, including a very cool new program we're running called Memory Podcasts. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel. Simply go to YouTube, search Bridgestone Beacon, go to our homepage, click subscribe. And when you do also click the bell icon so they actually notify you.

Beacon (39:49.868)
when we post new episodes.