Skip to main contentConsistently excellent public transit magazine Portland Afoot celebrated its second anniversary last night, and publisher Michael Andersen debuted his plan for the future: a mobile app.
Today, Portland Afoot launched a $5,000 Kickstarter campaign for a mobile magazine with an inspirational video that's a who's who of transit geeks. The magazine is a sometimes uncomfortable blend of solid reporting and sunny activism, reflected here.
There's mayoral candidates Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-Portland) and Charlie Hales, planning-board guru Chris Smith, most of the staff of bus-riders union OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, and... Cameron Whitten, for some reason.
All of them hold up handwritten signs, in what we assume is a tribute to Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters, etc.
So is this the future of local journalism? Smartphone apps funded by donations? Andersen says yes, maybe.
"Because smartphones are as close as we're going to get to the universal connections of the future," he writes. "People of color are more likely to own a smartphone than non-Hispanic whites, in part because smartphones are so wildly popular among young people."
"Also because everybody reads their smartphones on the train. Like, duh."
WWeek 2015