Steve Outing, in Boulder, Colo., a veteran observer and columnist on the new-media/journalism scene, has created a public Facebook Group (kind of like a mailing list but web only) to discuss ideas for “membership models” to support journalism. Here’s the public URL:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157802460917550

One of the commentators, Chris O’Brien, makes reference to Chris Peck’s “Next Newsroom” idea from 2008, which proposed that local online news communities, or newsrooms of the future, be organized as cooperatives, and news consumers would be invited to become “members” with various levels of privileges resulting.

Click on the links on the right rail of this page for ownership ideas from Chris: http://www.newshare.typepad.com/jtmnextnewsroom

I am going to raise this idea on Thursday when nearly 100 folks interested in Local Online News Communities (LONCs) gather in NPR in Washington, D.C. for this:

http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Community-news-caucus

Also, for a couple of years, Tom Stites has been working on his Banyan Project, and is now thinking of organizing it as a cooperative:

http://www.banyanproject.com