ENLISTING THE HELP OF LOCAL CELEBRITIES

Listen, we're not going to sit here and pretend that we are the coolest kids on the block. There are loads of charities in Boston, most of which are far more established and less controversial than us, and many of them raise millions using local celebrities, from athletes to the members of Aerosmith.

We're also not going to act like everybody who is interested in using ideas from BINJ-in-a-Box lives in a place where there are pro jocks and lead singers walking around. Nevertheless, we thought it was important to at least recommend that people starting journalism incubators reach out to the influencers in their area, as they can be extremely helpful in a number of ways. Here are a few things that we've done:

• We interviewed Sam Waterston and Eliza Dushku at our pop-up newsroom during the New Hampshire primary, and disseminated the posts widely with the subjects helping push on social media.
• We have Akrobatik, a popular hip-hop artist, on our advisory board, and have asked him to perform at fundraisers for us.
• We teamed up with local filmmaker Johnny Hickey on a program that teaches people in recovery for opiate abuse about media, and teaches them how to make their own media.
• We had local MTV reality show star play a competition on television for BINJ.