With the Seattle PI just a few weeks from shutting down its printing press — and perhaps the entire operation — Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata brought a council committee together today to talk about the future of newspapers in a soon-to-be one newspaper town. While I applaud Licata for tackling the complex topic — and giving people a forum to talk about it — I about fell out of my chair while I watched the live stream of the event at my desk. The vast majority of the discussion missed the point, straying into common misconceptions and old-school thinking about journalism in a new connected world. Finally, WestSeattleBlog’s Tracy Record and Crosscut.com’s David Brewster got their few minutes at the microphone.
Licata introduces them, “Editors, writers, producers, what do you call yourselves?”
“Journalists,” Record says, who runs arguably the most successful neighborhood news site in the country.
While Record and Brewster did a great job representing online news, the council proceeded to stray all over the place with questions that, out of fairness, represent the thinking of some people in the local news business. So without further ado, I’ve selected a few and added my own responses…
1. How will we save newspapers?
As Record told the council committee, newspapers are a delivery model. What needs saving is journalism, not newspapers. Arguing about saving newspapers and their large staffs misses the point: their business model is antiquated and did not adapt to a new reality. So let’s figure out how to create new sustainable business models that result in quality local journalism. Let’s think of ways to reinvent newspapers from the ground up online. Let’s focus our energy there instead of hearing ourselves talk about the institution of journalism and the good old days.
2. Ok, how do we keep all these journalists employed?
Still, wrong question. It’s easy to fall into the trap that the only way to produce quality journalism is for traditional media companies to fund large staffs of full-time journalists. The Seattle PI is considering going entirely online with a small staff, but the council committee (and the newspaper guilds, of course) didn’t seemed too interested in exploring that as a solution. After all, how can the quality of journalism be maintained when dozens of journalists are let go? Here are a few ideas worth exploring: content-sharing arrangements, pooling (do we really need 15 journalists at a press conference?), short-form “as it happens” reporting, networked neighborhood news sites (more on that in a second), freelance journalist networks, focused citizen contribution, empowered community conversation, etc. Sure, I think we’d all love to have large staffs of journalists, but it’s not an economic reality and not a viable strategy moving forward. So let’s move on and get creative.
3. “We had better start asking questions and realizing that the loss of the P-I, among others, would be a staggering loss to our community and a direct assault on the American people’s right to know.” (That’s from Congressman Jim McDermott.)
First of all, there’s the Seattle Times, four TV newsrooms and an all-news radio station in town. Then there’s two dozen neighborhood news sites, a dozen neighborhood newspapers, two alt weeklies with aggressive websites and a handful of niche news sites like Crosscut.com and the Puget Sound Business Journal, to name a few. People now go directly to national sites like msnbc.com for their national and international news. And whatever vacuum is created by the loss of the PI (and potentially the Times, as it’s in deep financial trouble) — just like any industry before it — will be filled by existing competitors and new start-ups.
4. So what about all these “blogs.” Are they “professional journalists?” How do we know they’re accurate? They might hear an explosion and post that “we’ve been bombed.” (Yes, that was a quote from a councilmember.)
This is when I about fell out of my chair. Seattle, as I’ve written before, is on the cutting edge of online neighborhood news with over two dozen sites and counting. (Please note these neighborhood sites are not like most neighborhood blogs: we actively cover the news.) About half of these are from people who have worked as traditional journalists at some point over their careers, like Tracy Record and me. The others, like Amber Campbell of RainierValleyPost, taught herself journalism, covering her lower-income, high-crime neighborhood with a depth and conviction that no newspaper or TV station in town can match. After all, when there’s a gang shooting, TV stations go live at 11 p.m. and drop the story the next day. Campbell hits the street in her own neighborhood, talks to families and looks for answers. Is she not a professional journalist? Hell yes, she is.
Brewster put it this way to the council: “Relax a bit.”
Because at the end of the day, neighborhood news sites that stretch the truth will alienate their audiences and become insignificant. The ones that get it right will grow in credibility, loyalty and audience.
5. These neighborhood news sites are “entertaining…”
WestSeattleBlog and many other neighborhood news sites in Seattle, like the site run by my wife and me, MyBallard.com, feature straightforward, issue-driven original coverage. But we also cover new restaurants, quirky neighborhood events and the occasional lost pet. We have a lower threshold of news, covering the small stuff in a couple lines. That’s why people come to us: for down-the-street content they can’t get anywhere else, because the newspapers and TV stations aren’t covering it.
5. “…but I haven’t seen you out here covering the city council.” (A councilmember directing a question to Record).
When you think about it, if every major Seattle neighborhood has a neighborhood news site (at the current rate, it will within a year) the unique daily stories produced in aggregate would be greater than both the Seattle Times and the PI combined (because those two papers overlap on a large number of stories). The breadth of coverage is greater, but you could argue there’s a gap here: in-depth and/or investigative stories associated with city hall, state government, etc. So you might imagine a streamlined, online-only newspaper that focuses on “core” beat coverage, leaving the neighborhood news sites to cover the “spokes” of neighborhood news and issues. And as I wrote on Lost Remote several months ago, you might imagine some intersection of the two. Or, perhaps the neighborhood news sites pool their resources to share freelance beat reporters. Hmmm.
And for the record, Record has covered the city council.
6. How can newspapers reinvent themselves online? Do neighborhood news sites have a sustainable business model? How might all this come together?
They didn’t ask those questions. But they should have. Instead, one participant bemoaned the “loss of the public sphere,” which was downright hilarious given the fact the meeting was being streamed live as well as live-blogged on a popular Seattle site. And the fact that Record had her laptop open, Twittering back and forth with a few folks in the audience and me, sitting at my desk. Loss of the public sphere? To the contrary. Media coverage of the past was closed-loop and out-of-reach and exclusive, severely less public than today. But as one co-worker suggested to me today, perhaps politicians feel threatened by the explosion of media voices: they can track and respond to a half-dozen news organizations — people and brands they know — but what happens when there’s hundreds of bloggers and thousands of tweets flying all over the place? Who’s “professional?” It moves fast. Too fast to “manage.” But democracy will live on. In fact, it will only get stronger.
As far as whether neighborhood news sites have a sustainable business model, I’m hopeful. The WestSeattleBlog is generating enough revenue to cover two full-time people and hire freelancers. Some argue it’s an anomaly, but our MyBallard.com network is growing leaps and bounds. After all, neighborhood news sites — which provide a layer of journalism over an empowered community — have an extremely low cost footprint, have an avid base of contributors, drive a large number of pageviews from user-submitted content, are developing quality business relationships with small businesses and most of all, are extremely relevant and truly unique.
Of course, there are many other ideas besides neighborhood news sites. That’s what we should be talking about, asking ourselves time and time again, is there a sustainable business model here? How can we leverage technology to connect an audience with local businesses in deeply meaningful ways? Because that’s the journalism problem that needs to be solved.
I’ll end with a moment of Zen. A quote fragment from Licata:
“I could register 50 hits with a physical newspaper.”
(Full disclosure: I was invited to speak at this event, but due to the last-minute nature of the request with my busy schedule, I was unable to attend.)
No related posts.
if you were unable to attend, where did the quotes and stuff come from?
Watched the live stream from my office, an hour away from Seattle.
Cory,
Excellent post. I found myself agreeing with nearly every bullet point.
What we are seeing is the development of an entirely new media landscape, which I too find pretty exciting.
John Cook
hey, relax a little yourselves…Licata put together the panel very deliberatively – even if flying by the seat of our pants.
OUTLINE =
1) first lay a foundation by talking about the importance of competition historically in media – why anti-trust, fcc, regulation etc – speakers: the academics.
2) what’s happened here in the past, in seattle – speakers: the citizens for a 2 newspaper town activists
3) what’s going on here now and elsewhere and why – speakers: the newspaper guild presidents (hundreds of jobs lost regionally, dozens of thousands nationally, and what is the response?)
4) is there anything to do about it, more importantly – should we decide something should be done? – speakers: community response from similar challenges in localities across the nation
5) if we don’ think print media should be saved then how does new media respond, how does the community support it? – speakers: David Brewster of Crosscut and Tracy Record of West Seattle Blog
6) how does tax-payer facilitated communication (Seattle Channel, Public Access Network, elected official public communication, public information generally) etc become more critical, how do we support it w/o violating the sacred firewalls between the reporters and the subjects of reporting? – speaker: Seattle Channel programing director.
yeah the future may be wholly in new media, but let’s get there together because first we decided together that the newspaper is dead and we don’t want to revive it.
this was just a first conversation, facilitated by an elected that is sensitive to the fact that this particular community has rallied around the newspaper – even if a newspaper is just a “delivery system.” Nick is happy to move the dialogue along towards the new media, this just was the right place to start.
Licata does not disparage blogging or online reporting. In 1997 he was a citizen online reporter, with his pioneer e-newsletter: “Urban Politics.” Then when he was elected, he continued Urban Politics (in 1998) and then he was one of the first electeds in the nation to have an e-newsletter. He neither thinks bloggers/online reporters are “hacks” (contrary to Erica C. Barnett’s SLOG characterization), nor is he skittish generally about technological advances.
Took me a few hours but I realize now why Councilmember Godden said she hadn’t “seen” me. While I’ve covered at least half a dozen City Hall events in person in recent months, and gone downtown for other coverage including the Alaskan Way Viaduct briefings and proceedings at the King County Courthouse, I have written about even more council proceedings courtesy of the same fine 21st-century system that allowed Cory to watch today’s event – the Seattle Channel, on cable or online.
I check ALL the committee agendas and note (as in a preview published this afternoon) when something of particular West Seattle interest is coming up – then more often than not find I’m the only person who wrote about that particular hearing. Sometimes these briefings yield real news, such as details on local transportation projects that hadn’t come to light till the project managers showed up for a council briefing.
If I have a followup question about something I see or hear in a covered-remotely event, it’s not usually much trouble to reach the person in question via e-mail or phone shortly afterward (often the followup doesn’t involve a hearing participant or attendee anyway – it’s someone else who needs to be asked, “DId you know they said X at today’s council hearing – what more can you tell me about that?”
There are lots of other city-related events that aren’t televised and must be covered in person. In fact, there was a day last (spring? summer?) when Cory and I were side by side on the 40th floor of the city Municipal Tower covering a Landmarks Board hearing – for separate proposals – Ballard had a hot project up for a vote; West Seattle had a smaller one that our site was alone in covering.
How can newspapers reinvent themselves online? Do neighborhood news sites have a sustainable business model? How might all this come together?
Hope you don’t mind, Cory, but I’m stealing these questions for the No News Is Bad News project. I think this is the crux of what we’re trying to answer.
The idea that bloggers = inaccurate had my jaw dropping, too. I’ve dealt with more inaccuracy with papers misquoting me or filling in the details than I have with blogs. The Wall Street Journal managed to resurrect my father who’d been dead for more than a decade.
Just to be clear, I agree that we’re in a migration or a convergence, if I might borrow one of this site’s old words and I’m sure that every town with two dailies is soon to have only one, but…
Fifteen journalists at a press conference is a chance for fifteen different questions and fifteen different perspectives, while only one or two could easily be replaced by a press release and in some cases, it could even result in collusion.
And, though I don’t have the statistics at hand, but there’s a huge percentage of people who don’t have internet or broadband access at home, or who rarely use the internet at all.
I mean, just looking around the couple of blocks surrounding my house in what is locally considered a well-to-do neighborhood, I’d guesstimate that at least 30% don’t have internet access at home and probably 10% have no internet access, whatsoever. Not to mention that though I’m one of those who claim to have helped “invent the internet” and am wired almost every waking hour, my wife primarily has access at work and she’s probably online at home, something like ten hours a week.
While on the other hand, when I leave a paper laying around, she’s likely to skim it and she’s usually within earshot during the late local news. And just yesterday, I was at the pharmacy, where I saw a paper abandoned on the waiting chairs and there’s usually papers laying around pretty much anyplace, people often gather or have to wait.
There is a democratization to having varied voices, over-the-air broadcasts and hardcopy newspapers just laying around. We’re headed toward a convergence and within a decade or so, we will be mostly online, but that doesn’t mean that some segments of society aren’t going to be left behind or that we’re there, quite yet.
And, I think the jury is still out, as to to whether community websites can be profitable for more than a few. Right now, anecdotally, we can say that some people are claiming to be making money, but I don’t know that there’s room for everyone to make a living and when all is said and done, we might might actually end up with fewer than those fifteen voices, you see at a press conference.
Thanks for the wrap (didn’t have time to watch it from my desk yesterday).
It’s disappointing that the neighborhood blogs still aren’t taken seriously. Arguing back and forth about profitability is one thing, but to argue with the reach and significance of them is just ignorant.
By the way, I thought this was a really good point:
“… [P]erhaps politicians feel threatened by the explosion of media voices: they can track and respond to a half-dozen news organizations — people and brands they know — but what happens when there’s hundreds of bloggers and thousands of tweets flying all over the place?”
Paul – They’ve been debating webcasting the New Mexico legislature lately and at a hearing the other day, one legislator said and I quote; “If I’m sleeping and I’m being recorded, it could be used as a political gain against (me by) my opponent. I’m very cautious about those kinds of things.”
(Click my name for the story and tape.
Oh, and BTW: the bill was passed along to a subcommittee)
@LH, as I wrote, I applaud that Licata and his team organized this discussion. It’s not an easy issue and there are a lot of stakeholders who want to be heard.
But the very near future of newspapers is overwhelmingly if not entirely “new media.” Record and Brewster were given just 10 minutes to talk about it. That’s where we must focus the discussion immediately to solve the challenges at hand.
Despite the doubts expressed from councilmembers about the web’s audience and credibility compared to newspapers, the data is clear: more people get their news from the web than printed newspapers. For people under 30, the web ties with television as their primary news source. And the trends clearly show the web emerging as the nation’s primary source for news.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1066/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source
To discuss anything else but the web in the context of newspapers, in my humble opinion, is looking back and not moving forward.
Cory – The problem with that Pew statistic is that the web is newspapers and television.
There are very few sites that are web-only news sources. Pretty much everything that people claim to be getting from the web is originating from a newspaper, television or wire service. It’s just that the meaning of these outlets have blurred, as we’ve headed toward the convergence.
re: “that’s where we must focus immediately,” i don’t disagree that that’s where the conversation needs to quickly go, but I respectfully disagree that when dealing with the likely demise of a 300 year old institution that is where it had to *begin.*
and Cory, just so you know, the last minute invite was only because i didn’t hear back from another blogger that agreed to be on the panel when Nick asked and then I didn’t hear back from him when I was trying to organize it, work out the agenda, etc. I waited until 2 days before and then realized I needed someone else.
Thanks, Cory, for laying it out so well. I was there myself, and as I tweeted at one point, sensed a promising shift in the high-level conversation about the future of Seattle news. Thanks to Tracy and David, the possibility of online news is on the minds of civic activists and councilmembers, and not just the death of the print product.
The sustainable business model question is the key to the whole thing. There will never be a shortage of journalists or a way to get their message out, but we don’t really want to get into a situation where only those who live as paupers or the very wealthy who don’t need income are working.
Amazing. The discussion about sustainability goes on. If tomorrow, Dennis Bounds is unable to come to work, somehow I think the news from KING 5 will go on. But if Tracy and her husband are in a serious car accident, your news source essentially stops. There IS NO redundancy (read reliability or sustainability if you like) in a business totally dependent on only two people. The value of internet advertising is simply not high enough to sustain a large enough cash flow at this point to support more than a couple of people on a local basis.
There are other hurdles too. Client education, the coming decline in banners in favor of more promotion and paid search spending (greater ROI and accountability), the rise of higher quality video online (can’t really do this with a camcorder), and all this in the face of the most serious economic downturn in 50 years. Those with any ad budgets through this period I assure you will be very tight fisted, and will hew to the tried and true (albeit at a lower level).
Neighborhood blogs ARE journalism certainly though some risk losing their audience over time through ‘over coverage’ opting for 3000 words when 300 would do. Or acting on the belief that the great bulk of the audience actually cares about an update every 5 minutes from a meeting. I assure you, they don’t.
Direct Mail is about to see a serious decline in usage…and SOME of that money may flow to neighborhood blogs if they are properly positioned but there are other competitive factors on the horizon they can’t see yet.
Newspapers, as they exist today, will be around for some time to come, largely because a LOT of people LIKE them and PREFER to get their news this way. The duplication of news found in TWO dailies is not useful to people when they can also get it electronically hence the higher profile closures and losses.
The demographic profile for this nation is NOT one dominated by youth. The Baby Boomer generation is split, no question, between newspapers and electronic news delivery but some old habits die hard. Newspapers aren’t dying quite yet. Bad newspapers, duplicate newspapers, poorly run newspapers, papers in areas with very high concentrations of both broadband access and a younger demographic…yup..these are being challenged. But many papers are doing well enough to sustain a profit. We just don’t hear about them much because that isn’t news.
‘convergence’ was a good goal 10 years ago.
now that tv stations are being forced to writedown (soon-to-be writeoff) the value of their tv properties, why anchor your web efforts to that?
luckily, some have turned and ran from ‘convergence’ towards divergence.
Aaron, I am sorry you apparently wish us so much ill-will that you have repeatedly referred to, in comments on this website (just assuming you are the same “Aaron”), my husband and I getting sick, dying, getting into a car crash. We have a succession plan. Better than some megacompanies for which I have worked. But I would kindly request that you stop discussing our potential death, injury, illness. It almost feels like a threat. Thanks.
First, thanks for the roundup Cory. I looked on the SeattleChannel site to see if Nick’s hearing was recorded/archived but apparently not. Always best to make first hand judgments.
In no particular order:
- Aaron’s point (#15) about redundancy is well taken and Tracy’s response (#17) a weird overreaction. If there is baggage from past interactions, take it outside.
- Who is going to pay for investigative journalism? The neighborhood focus is important and real and absolutely needs to be developed. But whose “neighborhood” is it when the UW screws up, or Boeing, or the Port, or state/local lawymakers? What about our courts? These are major institutions in our collective “backyard.” If you’re counting on the AP or Puget Sound Business Journal, you’re nuts! And while there are *some* TV reporters who can handle it, they’re understaffed, generally under talented, plus it’s a visual medium and if the video ain’t there, the story will be a hard sell.
- This also gets to city wide issues. If everyone’s looking after their ‘hood, who’s looking out for the larger city good on important policy questions.
- No question the web is where it’s going and finding that elusive “biz model” is paramount. At the same time, if you don’t see the value in what’s getting left behind we’re all screwed.
@InvitedMedia – I’d say that “convergence” was more like three years ago and “synergy” was closer to ten, but it all can mean the same thing.
Every sweep, one of the local stations run nightly essay-like reports from their investigative reporter, who spends all of the non-sweep periods conducting the investigations and unless there’s something that requires his special skills, he reports no other stories in these non-sweep periods.
Immeiately after his stories run on the television, the video goes to the frontpage of the station’s website and it’s added to the index of his stories on his own page.
Then, Topix picks it up for people to comment and they tag it with keywords; Google News adds it to their database of links, where it become accessible to a worldwide audience; Bloggers might pick it up and embed the video, sometimes a follow-up apopears in the local paper, etc, etc… but it all started with a report, the fellow filmed for television and everything else is repurposing, sort of like those little .css files that a website uses over and over to get the most milage out of a few lines of code.