From PortlandAfoot

Portland Afoot is two things:

• A four-page monthly newsmagazine about low-car life in Portland, Oregon.
• An editable online guide to low-car life in Portland.

You're reading the second thing right now.

It's not part of TriMet or the city or any other governmental organization. Instead, it's an independent, not-for-profit project by and for the ordinary people of Portland. If you use the information on this site or add some information of your own, you can consider yourself a member (if you want). Welcome to the team!

[edit] How we fit in

You might have seen our work discussed or linked in The Oregonian, the Mercury, KGW, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Willamette Week, Sunset Magazine, Sustainable Business Oregon, BikePortland or the Portland Business Journal, which called us part of "Portland’s most fertile new media period since the Portland Mercury and Portland Tribune appeared."

You might have heard about us from one of our 1,000 or so monthly subscribers, who regularly say our unusual print product is one of the best things they get in their mailbox.

However you caught our drift, we're part of the new generation of topical local news operations that are sweeping the country as general-interest newspapers and TV decline. We hope you enjoy building a new media system as much as we do.

[edit] How to contact us

Michael's the guy. Write him at michael@portlandafoot.org or call 503-662-2871. That's 503-On-A-Bus-1. For real.

He can also refer you to any of our board members.

By mail: 924 NE 65th Ave., Portland OR 97213.

[edit] Our business plan

Even nonprofits need business plans. Ours is open-source! Here it is, in a nutshell:

• We're building this online guide for free. It contains detailed information that remains useful for long periods of time. Online ads bring in enough to pay for our hosting and a few small bills, like our Skype line.
• We publish a beautiful four-page monthly print newsmagazine with news, features, events, stories and exclusive investigations about issues that matter to low-car households in Portland. It's mostly distributed in two ways: paid mail subscriptions and sponsored distribution to local workplaces. Home subscription revenue pays for its own production and mailing costs, and ad revenue pays for workplace distribution and our staff's reporting time.
• We report breaking news for free on Twitter (compulsively), Facebook (judiciously) and our low-fi blog (sporadically).
• We solicit donations and sustaining memberships to help spread the word about the project.

In July 2011, as we headed into our second year, our monthly product went to 867 subscribers; about 1,100 people were following us on Twitter, 325 on Facebook; and our website was reliably drawing 2,800 unique visitors each month.

We're small, but thinking big and growing fast.

[edit] Republishing our information

Everything produced by Portland Afoot is republishable for free under a Creative Commons license. Basically, if you promise to give Portland Afoot credit for whatever you're using, and share the result with others too, you can do whatever you want with it. This way, if this site ever goes away for some reason, all the information on it will be able to live on as a resource for the people of Portland.

[edit] Our friends

We love the folks at BikePortland.org, Portland Transport and Shift. They're our inspiration and our unpaid advisors, and if you're not checking them out already, do. They're essential resources for any Portlander who's into low-car life.

We're also big believers in PortlandWiki, the exciting new project to create an all-purpose resource for this beautiful, crazy city where wikis were born.

Our monthly magazine prints (on 100 percent post-consumer paper, of course) at the totally rad Eberhardt Press in southeast Portland and distributes via the equally rad U.S. Postal Service.

The site is hosted on a carbon-neutral Dreamhost server in Los Angeles, California.

We bank locally at Albina Community Bank. PayPal handles our credit card transactions and e-Junkie runs our shopping cart and affiliate program. (Thanks to local car-free author Tammy Stroebel for introducing us to e-Junkie, by the way.)

Both the print and Web products are built on designs by the brilliant Jeremy Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios.

Portland Afoot is descended from an original concept by Elisa Williams. It's since been shaped by invaluable advice and opinions from Rebecca Robinson, Justin Carinci, Roger Andersen, Kyanne Andersen, Isolde Raftery, Dick Ackley, Elly Blue, Jonathan Maus, Oscar Myre, Todd Kimball, Pam Marks, Alex Craghead, Dan Haneckow, Sarah Mirk, John Charles, Alan Durning, Karen Frost, Dan Christensen, Lenny Anderson, David Meyer, Heather McCarey, Dan Muzyka, Lindsey Kuper, Steph Routh, Mara Gross, Bob Chung, and everyone on Portland in the Round's board.

We're relieved to boast that the brainiacs at Davis Wright Tremaine, Bryan Cave and Gagnier Margossian have got our legal backs, thanks in large part to the essential support of the Online Media Legal Network.

[edit] Reading list

If you're interested, here's a feed of all the blogs and other information streams that Michael, Portland Afoot's editor, tries to keep up with. Most are local.

Here's our blogroll: a list of feeds from sites around the country similar to Portland Afoot, followed by a list of the local feeds Michael follows.

[edit] Our history

The short answer: We launched in June 2010. We're spring chickens.

The less short answer: Portland Afoot came together in Michael Andersen's head in spring and summer 2009. He registered this site on Nov. 25, 2009 and got together some smart people he knew to be on the board of directors. Portland in the Round incorporated as a nonprofit on Jan. 15, 2010, and held its first meeting on Feb. 21, when it took formal ownership of Portland Afoot. We published a print prototype (The Getaway Issue) in May 2010 before a 2,000 print run of our launch issue (The Time Issue) in June 2010. In October 2010, the IRS officially granted us 501(c)3 status.

We're finding our way in the world. Exciting, eh?

[edit] How to help

You'd like to lend a hand? We're thrilled! There are lots of ways anyone can help our project.

[edit] Subscribe to our magazine

The easiest way to help is probably to subscribe to our 10-minute monthly newsmagazine, which is responsible for most of our revenue and which is, frankly, a lot of fun to get in the mail. (Hard copies are also available for $1 at Microcosm Publishing, Clever Cycles and Reading Frenzy.)

[edit] Improve our website

Here's the single coolest thing about PortlandAfoot.org: Anyone can make it better at any time. You don't even have to register -- just click "edit" in the upper right and add any information you think might be useful, possibly to one of our popular pages. Or create an account for yourself and start creating new pages, especially ones on our wishlist. Or just add some new ideas to our wishlist, and someone else will get to them eventually.

[edit] Advertise in print or online

Both our products are partially supported by our delightful advertisers. Learn more here.

[edit] Help us distribute our magazine

We're now looking for distribution partnerships with organizations that share our support for low-car life. If you'd like to help make Portland's low-car community stronger by helping distribute our newsmagazine, contact Michael at partnerships@portlandafoot.org.

[edit] Spread the word

Finally, here's the number-one best thing you can do to help us succeed: tell people about us.

To keep our products affordable to anyone, we have a very small marketing budget. This means we rely on people who believe in our mission to get the word out. With our affiliate program, you can even make a few bucks for yourself or your organization -- visit PortlandAfoot.org/SpreadTheWord for details.

Almost all of us knows someone who gets around Portland without a car sometimes. We're obsessed with finding ways to be useful to that person. So let them know Portland Afoot is here, and that it's fighting their corner.