Helium Announces Media Solutions Program for Community News Outlets

Helium (www.Helium.com), the online spot to learn what you need and share what you know, today announces the official launch of Helium’s Media Solutions, a revolutionary way for newspapers to easily produce quality, custom, local and lifestyle content. Helium’s Media Solutions puts the power of citizen engagement behind media publications, giving them access to quality content that is cost-effective and easy to manage.

As part of the Media Solutions launch, Helium announced a strategic partnership with Springfield, Illinois-based daily newspaper, the State Journal-Register (SJ-R), a subsidiary of GateHouse Media, Inc. SJ-R will leverage Helium to promote citizen engagement, enable community-based reporting, and facilitate debate of local and national issues.

“By creating an interactive experience for our readers, Media Solutions enables us to engage them in a way that will help grow our audience and increase reader loyalty,” said Jon Broadbooks, executive editor, State Journal-Register and SJ-R.com. “This partnership provides a solution at a time when newspaper budgets are shrinking that will enableus to continue to provide unique, quality content on issues that matter to our readers.”

“We are thrilled to be launching Media Solutions with SJ-R,” said Mark Ranalli, president and CEO, Helium. “Together, we will connect citizens with an interactive platform to write, learn and debate. For the first time, members of SJ-R’s community – and beyond – will have a civilized outlet to participate.”

The Media Solutions program features two unique platforms. “Community Stringers” turns newspaper readers into community stringers who can produce custom articles on topics like dining hot spots, town politics, the real estate market, travel insights and more. By engaging their audience in this unique way, newspapers can give “power to the people” while complementing their current editorial staff. “Helium Debate” allows newspapers to invite the community they serve to debate local, regional and national issues. The self-moderating platform takes the work out of moderating forums, encourages civil discourse and promotes meaningful posts.

Pioneering the program, SJ-R will invite its audience and Helium’s member base, which exceeds 150,000 writers, to write articles on local topics like travel destinations, dining hot spots, town politics and more at Helium. In addition, SJ-R will feature related articles from Helium as a supplement to its original content. Powered by Helium Debate, SJ-R will also highlight local, regional and national debate topics on its website. Citizens will be presented with a new debate topic every day at SJ-R.com. They can then go to co-branded pages on Helium.com to debate either the pro or con side of the issue by writing a compelling article, or to read all articles submitted. SJ-R will use this model to publish opinion/editorial pieces.

About the State Journal-Register

The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., is a 50,000 daily/58,000 Sunday newspaper serving the state's capital. The publication's Web site, www.sj-r.com, logs more than 5.2 million page views monthly. The newspaper is the oldest in Illinois, and is owned by Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse Media Inc.

About Helium

Helium is the online spot to learn what you need and share what you know. Helium goes beyond search, bringing together real advice from real people on a wide variety of topics. Helium combines citizen journalism with a simple yet highly effective peer-rating process that pushes the best content to the top, whether there are 5 or 500 articles on a topic. Helium is a fun community for people who are passionate about a topic to read, write and rate articles and be rewarded for their efforts. Try it now at www.Helium.com.