Let's build a database of independent news sites

December 10, 2008 By 5 Comments

Ever since completing some reporting this fall on the status of community news Web sites, I’ve wanted a better sense of whether these new startups have a realistic chance of surviving and ultimately thriving. Last week I got my chance to ask an expert – my OJR colleague Robert Niles.

The answer, said Niles, is yes – though I should note his response came after a long pause. Not surprisingly, he had some caveats. The main one is that startup operators need a back-up way to pay the rent and buy groceries for as long as a year after launch. It can take that long for most sites to build an audience and advertising base, Niles said, and the duration seems to be growing, as Internet users’ options grow. Even then, Niles said, operators need to know that costs have to be kept “as close to zero as possible,” and profits are going to be modest. “But yes,” he said, “it’s possible to make money.”

The anecdotal evidence I’m seeing convinces me that a lot of people are trying, and more are going to follow. I can only imagine how difficult a challenge this is. The people who succeed are going to need a very wide skill set, a passion for success and a tolerance for very long hours. Not only that, but people starting now are launching against Depression-like conditions that will make matters much, much worse.

And yet…

Last week, at the University of Missouri conference on the Information Valet Project, I ran into Bob Gough, who runs the eight-month old QuincyNews, a Web site in Quincy, Ill. Although he’s going up against established hometown media, Gough said he’s already turning a profit on the strength of 30 local businesses advertising on his site. And, said Gough, he’s thinking about expanding.

Beyond that, these days I’m seeing increasing references to some of the people I interviewed for my reporting on community news sites. Last week, for example, Romensko linked to the Ann Arbor Chronicle, a husband-wife team who are trying to make a go in Michigan.

Another thing I’ve been eager to know is how many of these sites are up and running. They, of course, come in all kinds of sizes and blends, so counting them is an inexact science. But I’d like to try to get a better fix, so I’m going to continue expanding the list I began a couple of months ago. You can see it at the end of my first OJR piece on independent news sites.

Send me an e-mail (dwestpha@usc.edu) if you operate one of these sites or know of someone who does. As in the earlier list, here’s the information I’m looking for (using the Ann Arbor Chronicle as an example):

Ann Arbor Chronicle (Michigan)
Launched: September 2008.
Target audience: Ann Arbor area.
Content: All local content. Daily postings of local news, features, public meeting coverage, opinion pieces, cartoons.
Staff: Two full-time, plus more than a dozen “correspondents” contributing to a feature modeled after Twitter.
Key leaders: Mary Morgan, David Askins.
Status: For-profit. Local advertising revenue model.
Metrics: 4,000 unique visitors for the first month in operation.

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A new Web application that (might) help pay for the news

December 8, 2008 By 6 Comments

Assume for the moment that the chemistry which made newspapers a business success for hundreds of years no longer works. Assume that billions of dollars in revenue vanish from newspapers because advertisers discover that they have better, targeted options on the Internet. (Given this week’s bankruptcy filing by the nation’s second-biggest newspaper company, Tribune Co., these assumptions shouldn’t be much of a stretch.)

What, then, happens to the content that was part of that chemistry? What happens to the news and information we’ve always thought was an integral portion of keeping our democracy humming?

About four dozen people interested in this question were offered a possible answer last week at the University of Missouri: You build an entirely new kind of chemistry, a Web concoction so compelling that people are willing to pay a few bucks a month for it, and part of that money will be used to pay for news content. (Alternatively, users might agree to provide a bunch of personal information that could be used to sell advertising.)

Here’s what the paying customers would get: An Internet interface that would be a one-stop shop for all registrations on the Web (no more endless filling out of user-registration forms); a trustworthy, safe and secure place where privacy worries would disappear; and a news and information site that would provide local news obtainable nowhere else.

Is this something you’d consider paying a few dollars a month for (or hand over personal information)?

When I first heard this concept explained by conference organizer Bill Densmore, a scholar at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at Missouri, my first inclination was to say no. Internet users expect stuff to be free – including ease of use, security and content. And even if someone came up with a killer application that could command monthly fees, what are the odds the news business would be the creative force pulling it off? Or that news content would be essential to making it work?

But Densmore got my attention when he talked about how, in some ways, the newspaper itself also was an unlikely candidate for success – an oddball combination of news, advertising, comics, horoscopes, etc., that became one of the most lucrative businesses ever invented. It shouldn’t be shocking that the model that might replace it has a bit of Rube Goldberg in it as well.

And, of course, there’s this question: Who’s got a sure-fire better idea on how to pay for news content? This is not a moment to be rejecting new ideas out of hand.

The Missouri conference came up with this description of what the project – Densmore calls it the Information Valet Project — is trying to achieve:

“A permission-based ecosystem assuring privacy that allows you, in a trustworthy way, to share personal information so that content providers and partners can create a structure to provide you with content, applications and incentives tailored to you and your needs.”

What do you think of this idea? You can find out more about the Information Valet Project (and leave your input) here.

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Brian Lamb: C-SPAN not immune to the digital threat

November 20, 2008 By 1 Comment

C-SPAN would seem to have as secure a future as any news operation could have. Thirty years after Brian Lamb began shopping around his off-the-wall idea for a public affairs network funded by the cable industry, it’s hard to imagine a media landscape without C-SPAN’s rich offerings on TV, radio and the Web.

But Lamb says C-SPAN will be buffeted by the digital revolution just like everyone else. Despite successful work in recent months on a new long-term plan that helps ensure the network’s future, Lamb told an audience at the University of Southern California that C-SPAN’s core business could be affected.

“I see the handwriting on the wall at our network,” Lamb said. “You gotta’ be a little more agile … a little more nimble, to survive.”

Lamb delivered the James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting on Thursday at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, at a lunch sponsored by the school’s Center on Communication Leadership.

Beneath the about-to-open congressional visitors center, he said, are TV control rooms – 13 on the Senate side alone – that will direct video of hearings across Capitol Hill. Describing these facilities as having been built “under the darkness of night,” Lamb said his suspicion is that this congressionally directed video will be sent directly to the Web. “You can tell what that means for us,” he said.

Lamb also noted that the refurbished American History Museum now has Webcasting capabilities that will allow the museum to stream events there to its own site.

Each of these examples would mark an end run around C-SPAN’s bread-and-butter, Lamb said. “I could envision a time when they’ll stop calling us… It’s a changing world and we better wake up and smell the coffee.”

At the outset of his remarks, Lamb said that while 30 years ago he had a sense of where the industry was headed, it’s different now. “I have no idea where this is going,” he said.

But Lamb also talked about ways new technologies will create opportunities in the future. He noted the multimedia work done by the Anchorage Daily News in the recent trial of Sen. Ted Stevens – a trial Lamb often attended. And how a single blogger, Alaska lawyer Cliff Groh, offered an entirely different take on the trial proceedings.

“I think we’re going to be a lot better off than a lot of people in journalism rare thinking right now,” he said.

Lamb offered a hint about where he thinks journalism today may be missing the boat. He observed that the questions asked by members of Congress during hearings are often better than those asked by journalists – and that the members “really rip, like journalists never do.”

Similarly, he said, because it is unregulated, C-SPAN never censors callers. “We let it rip.”

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