Truthdig: Webzine launches excavation into national and international politics

December 6, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Robert Scheer — a nationally-syndicated liberal columnist, book author, radio show host, and USC journalism professor — has never faced much of a challenge captivating an audience. So, when the Los Angeles Times announced its new Op-Ed lineup in November 2005 — sans Sheer — it was no surprise that his loyal readers launched an unprecedented protest that included many cancelled newspaper subscriptions. Meanwhile, L.A. Observed led the blogosphere in speculation about why the Times discontinued his column.

In a fortunate coincidence of timing, Scheer was just about to launch a new joint venture, Truthdig.com. It’s a collaborative effort with publisher Zuade Kaufman, who is an entrepreneur and former reporter for Westside Weekly, a now-defunct Los Angeles Times-operated local paper. While Kaufman focuses on business and design elements, Scheer showcases his editorial sensibility across the site, including his “Ear to the Ground” section.

According to the site, Truthdig is “built around major ‘digs,’ led by authorities in their fields, who will drill down into contemporary topics and assemble packages of content — text, links, audio, video — that will grow richer with time and user participation.” Two experts featured on the site now are leading digs on China and on the relationship between religion and homosexuality.

Over a late night supper at a downtown L.A. brasserie, Scheer and Kaufman talked to OJR about the Truthdig launch, magazine-style writing on the Web, and premortem eulogies.

OJR: In Steve Wasserman’s Truthdig piece, “Chicago Agonistes: The Plight of the L.A. Times,” his lead opens with the following: “Why continue to read newspapers? After all, newspapers are losing circulation at precipitous rates, giving rise to fears that they may not survive long enough to write their own obituaries.” How is your site providing readers with coverage that the established media are not?

Scheer: First of all, we’re not competitive with established media. In fact, we’re using them as a basic resource. In my Ear to the Ground, we’re finding things in The Washington Post, the BBC, The New York Times. There’s a great deal of data out there, but the most reliable sources are the established media and we’re certainly not going to turn our back on it. We’re going to use it, or mine it, if you like. Our goal is to use writers who care about the subject, and know something about it.

I put the Truthdig website up on a projection screen in my [USC] class, and I said, here’s an example, Saddam Hussein is on trial. That’s the news. But he’s on trial for events that happened in 1982. After ’82 the U.S. got involved with Saddam Hussein, and supported him and so forth. We have an uncovered file on Saddam Hussein on our site. In a pre-Internet or pre-computer world you would have had to encourage students to visit a major library to find these documents. We also have a ground link to a CDC report on sexual behavior, which I suspect people find interesting. It just didn’t make much news. More than 50 percent of young people seem to engage in oral sex, and it seems to go both ways so that’s a big change in our society that has not really been noted. We can take an otherwise stale government document, make a link to it to get people interested enough to read it for themselves, and then link to another document. That’s the basic idea of the site.

We’re not pitted against old media. What we are pitted against is the model old media is trapped in. We wanted to stand as an alternative model to what’s going on on the Internet. When you get away from the mainstream media, it’s basically hyperventilated opinion. It’s what I call bar room conversation. Wasserman’s piece is 3100 words and I didn’t in any way try to cut it down, and I didn’t try to chop it into sections. I didn’t ruin it by saying it needed to fit on a specific amount of screens. Hopefully some readers will settle in with it; print out stories to read on their couch, or read them on their laptops at Starbucks. Our current issue is closer to Harpers or the New Yorker.

OJR: What do you think is more to blame for the demise of major newspapers: corporate stake holding or the Internet?

Scheer: I don’t think we know yet whether newspapers are going to drop off. First of all, they make money. They don’t seem to make as much money as some people may have expected when they bought the paper, and they don’t always make as much money as they used to make, but the Los Angeles Times is certainly making money. They had a pretty good profit picture last year, but it’s true they lost readership. So I think [the traditional media] are in a transition period but they’re still the best thing on the Internet.

OJR: In a post on Huffington, you wrote: “The [Los Angeles Times'] publisher, Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately sixty percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher.”

Scheer: Truthdig’s opening banner says, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” I’ve had a lot of opportunity, I’ve never had any trouble getting printed. When I went to the Los Angeles Times, I went with idea that I would continue to publish elsewhere so I did. I knew that either way I had Truthdig [which was conceived a year and a half ago.] I also knew that other papers would carry my column and magazines would carry my work. In that statement that you read on Huffington Post, I think there were 370 or 390 comments, you don’t get that response from a newspaper column very often.

OJR: Do you think the Los Angeles Times handled your departure fairly?

Scheer: No. The publisher took over the editorial page. I worked for the paper as a reporter for 17 years. I’ve been a contributing editor and columnist for the last almost 13 years. I have a lot of friends in the building. I heard from more than one person, including people I was working with in the op-ed section, that this publisher very deliberately said he wanted the paper to be more conservative, and that he particularly didn’t like my column. I kept asking [Op-Ed Editor] Nick Goldberg if the column was over, and Nick finally did say it was going to end. He told me very clearly that the publisher didn’t like the column. I said look, there’s a polite way to do this and an impolite way. I said there’s a difference between being pushed out the window or escorted to the door. I never heard from [Editorial Page Editor] Andrés Martinez and I never heard from the publisher. And I thought that was unseemly. And so Kevin Roderick from LA Observed. That’s how this whole thing started. He called me and said I hear this [rumor that your column is ending], and I said I hear the same rumors. That’s where it snowballed and [the Los Angeles Times] had to accelerate their timetable.

What offends me, the basic point I’d like to come out of this interview, quite apart from anything about Truthdig: We [in journalism] don’t cover ourselves. And for all the time I was at the Los Angeles Times, the one story there that people knew best and reported least was what was going on in that building. The history of the Los Angeles Times has been very important to this city.

This publisher has wanted to [kill the column] ever since he’s been in that building. And why? Is it pressure from [Tribune Company headquarters in] Chicago? Is it some complaining of the Bush administration which has power over your waiver of the FCC? You would think journalists would ask those questions and they could get answers. But I don’t hear anything.

NOTE: In a note to readers published on Nov. 15, 2005, Martinez defended the paper’s decision to discontinue Sheer’s column by writing, “Some readers have complained that The Times is conspiring to silence liberal voices on the Op-Ed page. Others have gone so far as to suggest that Scheer is being punished for opposing the war in Iraq. But that is hardly a badge of shame around here — the newspaper’s own editorial page opposed the decision to invade Iraq.”

OJR: What is your response to the cancelled subscriptions to protest your leaving the editorial pages?

Scheer: I’m proud of the work I’ve done. Anybody can go and read it on the Internet. And that’s what saved me from the Bill O’Reillys and Rush Limbaughs. They built up a big national audience for me and then people would Google me and find my website. And they can read all my columns, and so my work will stand by itself.

I.F. Stone wasn’t admired much before he died. His column was killed at every major newspaper and he had to publish his own little newspaper. And I see Truthdig as kind of an I.F. Stone weekly on speed. When the paper killed my column, I got to hear the eulogies before I died. It’s quite a gift. The outpouring of support from people was incredible.

OJR: What will differentiate your site from those such as Huffington Post, which also launched with a built-in fan base?

Scheer: I like her site. I made it my homepage. Her stuff is very newsy and very fast changing. We have much more of a point of view. We’re archival, and she’s in the moment. We’re about digging for the truth, digging through the headlines. So we’ll leave things up a lot longer we’ll go deeper. I think we compliment sites like Huffington’s by trying to develop a more profound documented view of these issues.

Kaufman: We’re looking at it as sort of a cross-pollination, not competition.

OJR: Several blogosphere comments note that Truthdig, unlike Huffington Post, does not read like a blog but like a traditional print publication. What do you envision for the site’s writing style?

Scheer: I don’t want to be intimidated by a notion of what the Web writing should be. In a way, when you see it, you’ll know it. We want good writing.

Kaufman: You can compare our pieces with any of the best magazines or publications out there.

Scheer: That’s an important point. I think what we have on the site right now could stand in the newsstands with Harpers and the New Yorker or anyone else. They’re extremely well-written pieces. And we work them the same way a magazine would. I don’t know how this is going to work out in the long run because it’s pretty damn labor intensive. From an online journalism point of view the real test for us will be to see if people want to settle in with us as a magazine that will not change that quickly.

OJR: Truthdig seems focused on in-depth analysis. Does that mean the site won’t compete as a breaking news source?

Scheer: We’re not indifferent to the news. We see these pieces as kind of evergreens in that they can be refreshed, they can be retopped. Also, our dig leaders are going to blog. We could not afford to invest in this inventory if we thought the inventory was going to be dated.

OJR: LA Observed reported “a young writer has already been sent to the Middle East on a ‘dig.’”

Scheer: We have a writer who has been doing a dig for us on Iraq. He works for another publication that is sending him, so they’re paying part of his trip and we’re piggy-backing on it by picking up some of his expenses.

OJR: Will your funding and ambition continue to allow for this kind of reporting? Do you plan to set up bureaus of sorts?

Scheer: There are two ways to raise money for our site. One is through advertising and sales. We’re also not above going to individuals or foundations to maybe raise some money for specific projects.

OJR: What is the Bazaar page?

Kaufman: We’re going to sell items, including books and videos (DVDs), that we endorse. Also, when writers reference a certain item on our site, then readers will be able to buy those items in our Bazaar they’ll be able to go to our site to get it.

Scheer: We also have a line of Truthdig books coming out with Akashic Books and the first one is one I’ve done on the presidency. And we think these archives will lead themselves to book collections. If you develop a really good archive on something you’re half way to a book.

OJR: How will A/V booth showcase multimedia? What about user participation aside from comments?

Kaufman: We’re going to podcast all the digs. We have text enlargers for people who have a difficult time seeing. And we want to provide audio of the longer digs.

Scheer: Zuade’s feeling is there are a lot of good documentaries out there that no one ever gets to see.

Kaufman: I’ve already commissioned a short one for the site that is an extension of “Off to
War,” which is a 13-part series currently airing on the Discovery Channel. I’ve also been approached to collaborate on a feature length documentary that would have a theatrical release. It would be partially produced by Truthdig. If that goes through, then we’ll show clips on our site and it will have dig elements, such as court documents since it is about a pending legal case. Some of the key participants, including one that is in prison, said they would blog on our site. So you see, the possibilities are endless here. Also, I did a photo essay on Ron Kovic who wrote “Born on the Fourth of July” about living with the wounds [from the Vietnam war].

Scheer: She took pictures of him asking what it means to be in a wheelchair for 35 years, and we got Kovic to do an audio reading the new introduction to his book. Our whole point is here’s a guy wounded in Vietnam in 1969, and the wounds don’t go away.

OJR: How and when was the idea for Truthdig conceived?

Scheer: Zuade was working with me on a local column that I was doing for Our Times [a defunct series of community papers owned and distributed by the Los Angeles Times]. We enjoyed it, and we had a big impact. We probably could have made money with a small paper, or probably still could.

Kaufman: When they closed Our Times, we talked about maybe doing a Westside paper. We did the numbers on that and found that it would have taken seven years to get a return, and it was risky.

Scheer: Local papers can do well but it’s really labor intensive.

OJR: Who is the Truthdig reader? Is your audience national or local? In what ways are you attempting to court the diverse, multicultural audience that critics argue is lost to the LAT?

Scheer: Zuade and I are equally as interested in international and national events.
Of the first 20 or 30 responses we received when we launched, three were from Americans living in Paris. We’re assuming if we can show the reader that something is interesting and important, they will follow our links. We’re not looking to have a million unique visitors. If I can end up with 50,000 or 70,000 people who really find this a useful site then I’m a happy camper. This is not a food fight in a cafeteria. This is an attempt to put out a good solid magazine of substance that has a progressive point of view. I pick people who I think have decent values. They don’t have to agree with me.

OJR: Describe your ad-driven business plan. Why did you launch without ads? Who are your current financial backers?

Scheer: It’s a joint partnership [between Kaufman and Scheer].

Kaufman: We’re not opposed to advertising. We will have ads. We first really want to get across the merit of our content and our page. We’re promoting ourselves right now. [In terms of ads], what you’re talking about are nickels and dimes before you have a readership.

Scheer: We’re not quite sure about this, but we think people have over-promised on the Web. We made a vow to each other not to over-expect for this site. At the end of two years, if we’ve put a good quality product that we’re proud of, and if we’ve sustained x amount of losses and it doesn’t work, we’ll pull the plug on it. Yet, [given the big shift of advertising on the Web], we figure if we develop 75,000 loyal readers we can then legitimately go to people and say this a good way to reach them.

Kaufman: We’re just wanting to produce something worth — with merit that we’re proud of.

Scheer: We don’t see it as a get rich scheme either. We’re pretty realistic about it.

OJR: Considering your other commitments–teaching, a radio show, books, a syndicated column — where does Truthdig fall on your list of priorities? What will your followers find on Truthdig that they won’t get on the other platforms?

Scheer: Truthdig is my mistress. Call it my decadence, whatever you want. It’s what I enjoy. Writing is painful for me. Teaching is the hardest dollar I’ve ever earned. I like getting back to editing, and I like working with writers. It’s a labor of love.

OJR: What will your followers find on Truthdig that they won’t get on the other platforms?

Scheer: Clearly, I have certain social orientations that hopefully some people care about or respect. Hopefully I bring some intelligence a sense of history because that’s what an editor does. I’m not the editor of the other publications. And, now, I have a publisher who meets me for a late night dinner, as opposed to the one at the L.A. Times, who wouldn’t even meet me for a cup of coffee.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

Latimes.com introduces blogs, with more changes on the way

May 26, 2005 By 3 Comments
  • Postcards from Cannes by Los Angeles Times staff writer Mary McNamara
  • Snapshots from L.A.’s mayoral election day by Times staff writers and op-ed contributors
  • Video produced from a video-game convention:

Welcome to Latimes.com, relaunched.

In total, five new event-driven blogs have appeared on Latimes.com since it unveiled its new design two weeks ago. Yet what garnered the most attention is the much anticipated public reopening of Calendarlive.com, which, since August 2003, had been accessible only to seven-day print subscribers or online readers who paid an extra monthly fee. The decision caused a stir in the online journalistic community about the future of paid content and sparked debate about its ability to succeed. [See related OJR story.]

Rob Barrett, who assumed the position as general manager of Latimes.com in January, said the removal of Calendarlive.com’s paid-content wall is only the first step in a year-long process.

“This is more of a phase one, and I see phase two as a site with many more kinds of functionality,” said Barrett. “[Latimes.com] is not an ‘add on’ anymore. We are moving toward a highly cooperative operation in which we are using the talents of our print staff to produce web-only material every single day.”

Barrett began his career as a general assignment and beat reporter at the Raleigh News & Observer before enrolling in the Kennedy Business School at Harvard. Since then, he has worked for ABCNews.com, Time Online and Primedia’s Channel One Network. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Interactive for Actual Reality Pictures, a position he said allowed him to make a formal move from the editorial side to the business side. He also worked on a political reality show called “American Candidate.”

“It was the biggest budget that any T.V. show had dedicated to the Internet, and we did things that anticipated what happened in Howard Dean campaign [in terms of] grassroots involvement,” he said. “The use of the Internet as way to involve grassroots participation was interesting to me.”

Working from a swank corner office in the Times’ landmark building in downtown Los Angeles, Barrett’s attention is torn between his computer screen and a continually pulsing BlackBerry-esque device.

“Since I’ve been here in January, we have spent a lot of time talking with the senior people in every department at the L.A. Times, and there is a very strong commitment from the publisher and from senior editors and from heads of every department to make a big push to be very competitive in online in every way.”

Going forward, Barrett said he envisions Calendarlive.com as a section that functions both as a showcase for editorial content and as a listings provider.

“I think there is still the opportunity for a very robust listings site that contains a lot of the rich content that comes out of the Los Angeles Times,” he said. “At the same time, if you take Calendarlive in a more database, listings type format, that doesn’t really sync up with the story-driven aspect of entertainment coverage. So what we’re looking at is whether there be a way to separate the storied content of [the print section] Calendar.”

While the Times’ entertainment coverage attracts national attention, listings offer a way to cater to an aggressively courted local audience.

“We’ve got the most extensive listings of anyone in print or online in Southern California,” he said.

Not surprisingly, traffic on the site has increased since the wall came down, although Latimes.com editor Richard Core said it’s too soon to announce specific numbers.

Changing Business Model

Latimes.com’s Elaine Zinngrabe, Director of Interactive, points toward increased advertising online as one reason to steer the site’s business model in a different direction.

“In the past couple of years we’ve seen real growth in the online advertising market, particularly in the entertainment segment. With Calendarlive available to more consumers, this should be of strong economic benefit,” she wrote in an e-mail interview.

Barrett also expressed confidence in Latimes.com’s ability to successfully compete in the increasingly competitive classified ads market, where many newspapers are seeing the volume of their classified ads dwarfed by online competitors, notably Craigslist, which offers free ads in most markets.

“The Craigslist model is very interesting. What’s interesting also is that there are many people — many more than you might think — who use the [Times-owned] Recycler, and we have plans in this direction to be very, very competitive,” he said.

But paid content is not yet dead, at least not at the Times. Although Latimes.com has not specifically decided which content to charge for, Barrett said it will be along the lines of building database products with added value.

“We will consider a mixture of free and premium products going forward,” he said. “[It’s] that we should wall not pieces of what we’re already offering, but we should build new products that offer new value, and charge for them, and in some cases offer them free to Los Angeles Times print subscribers.”

Barrett added, “I want to be very clear that we have not decided on any particular parts of premium areas yet. We just believe philosophically that we ought to build the broadest possible audience with a free product in a very competitive market.”

Barrett also refused to speculate on The New York Times’ announcement, less than a week after the Calendarlive.com opening, that it will charge users $49.95 a year to access opinion and some other columnists.

“Both the L.A. Times and The New York Times and other newspapers have been thinking about the paid content issue for a long time,” he said. “So, I don’t think it’s meaningful to talk about whether there’s a connection between what we did and what they did.”

However, Barrett did discuss Latimes.com’s big plans for its own Sunday opinion section, at least in terms of packaging.

“To build a strong opinion magazine with [op-ed Editor] Michael Kinsley, part of what we have been doing is talking with the USC game lab about coming up with new story-telling formats, and hopefully we will be producing things that no one has ever seen before online,” he said.

New look, new content

Design changes to the site, which include new navigation bars and a restructured, cleaner look, are meant to maximize local coverage, said Core.

“We’re trying to emphasize the offerings of L.A. Times and its perspective as a West Coast/California newspaper,” he said. “The L.A. Times is in a unique position in that it’s the paper for a very large, local region as well as one of the recognized leading news organizations in covering the world and the nation, so we have to cover all those bases.”

For the last several years, the Times’ Extended News Desk has provided breaking news content for Latimes.com. Now, with a total of seven dedicated staffers on the Extended News Desk, and increased cooperation from the print staff, the site can break and update stories more frequently.

“If the Extended News Desk Editor Mike Young spots something that we should get on the site right away, then as soon as it’s ready we’ll take that story, and we’ll get an early edit from the respective desks to get it on the site right away,” said Core.

Core said print staffers have become less resistant to continuous deadlines because the Web has proved beneficial.

“Members of our staff are using the Internet in their daily reporting, and they’re seeing for themselves how the pace of news and exchange of information happens,” he added.

In addition to staff-updated blogs, the Times has also hired journalist Richard Rushfield as a senior editor specifically focused on producing original content for the site. He said the recent blogs are the result of combined effort of various desks.

Both entertainment and business reporters updated the recent “upfronts” blog, in which networks announce their plans for the upcoming television season.

“They had four reporters BlackBerrying and calling in their reports to Shawn Hubler, a talented writer here who condensed their reports several times throughout the day,” said Rushfield.

Engaging users

Latimes.com also has plans to join the user participation mix.

“We’re thinking very hard about a community infrastructure that involves members of the public and interesting figures from various walks of life in the larger conversation that we have with Los Angeles, with Southern California and with the rest of the country,” said Barrett.

Barrett is concerned with presenting thoughtful ways to engage users in dialogue, as well as the competition that already exists.

“We recognize that people go to many different kinds of websites, and we’re not just competing with newspaper websites,” he said. “So if we’re going to have user-generated content, we’re going to try to set a tone that what happens in our section adds areas of expertise.”

As Latimes.com continues to take inventory in the upcoming year, it will leave some well-established principles in place.

The recent blog entries demonstrate what’s possible on the Web with the resources of a big newspaper behind it, Rushfield said. But, he added, the editorial content at Latimes.com will also need to maintain the editorial standards of the rest of the paper.

“The worst thing that a newspaper could do with its site is to try to make itself the most edgy, with-it, down-in-the-dirt site,” he said. “What the L.A. Times has is not edge necessarily — it has resources, insight and history.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Newsroom veterans debut a new online voice in San Diego

May 12, 2005 By Leave a Comment

After 50 years’ work at various incarnations of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Neil Morgan got an unexpected present on his 80th birthday: a 30-day termination notice.

But he was not ready for retirement and neither was Buzz Woolley, a retired venture capitalist who thought that San Diego readers would miss Morgan’s voice. Over lunch several days later, they discussed the idea of launching a news website to cover what they thought mainstream media was ignoring or overlooking in the community. Another phone call brought on board Barbara Bry, a former L.A. Times and Sacramento Bee reporter who’d just helped take Proflowers.com public.

Together, they launched VoiceofSanDiego.org, a nonprofit site whose mission is in part, to “encourage civic participation through an interactive forum that offers diverse perspective,” and to “provide courageous reporting on a region not fully understood or reported by existing media.”

Now, three months after launch, Morgan said he believes Voice of San Diego has already achieved its objective to offer diverse voices.

“It has actually provided a very distinctive, fresh, enlightened voice to the people who care about this community. They’ve latched onto it as a progressive and forward-looking, unlike some existing media,” he said, explaining, “I think a whole lot of people feel that the Tribune has had a very conservative base and that its view of the community is obsolete.”

Morgan now works as the senior writer on Voice of San Diego’s staff, where he is featured as a regular contributor.

“I do personal columns and modes of what I did for 50 years at the paper,” said Morgan. “I also use all my years and sources and contacts to get some stories that we lead the community with.”

Bry serves as the editor and CEO of Voice of San Diego.

“Online news is not selling flowers but at least I had helped put together a website. I understood about marketing on the Internet,” she said, sitting in the conference room of the 750 square foot office space her staff is quickly outgrowing.

Although Woolley initially thought about creating Voice of San Diego as a print publication, Bry said the decision to publish exclusively online was easy to make.

“Number one newspaper readership is declining and number two the cost of printing and distribution is is much bigger than what we’re spending.”

Voice of San Diego considers itself “interactive,” but it does not host blogs on its site.

“I think all of us at Voice agree that blogging has a reputation that is quite different from disciplined news coverage,” said Morgan. “I think the egalitarian nature of the blogging means everyone has an equal voice, and that’s fine for a basis of founding a democracy but it’s lousy in terms of getting proper news coverage.”

Adds Bry, “We shied away from doing a blog because I’m worried that it will be taken over on a fringe element by one side or another.”

Instead, their version of interactivity funnels through two sections. Voice publishes 99 percent of (edited) letters to the editor, and it invites experts in the community to write free for a “Contributing Voices” section. The current list speaks to the site’s influential audience: it includes a litany of Ph.D’s in multiple fields, as well as business and social leaders.

“These are experts in their field who can chime in with authority on something. Whereas maybe if something in their field topic would come up, we’d have to go send a reporter out, and we can’t do that right now,” said staff writer Evan McLaughlin.

McLaughlin, whose official title is staff editor but whose duties seem to function more like a city desk editor, had multiple job offers upon his recent graduation from the University of California at San Diego, where he served as editor-in-chief of the UCSD Guardian. He chose Voice, in part, because of “San Jose Mercury News,” said McLaughlin. “He stopped that right when I took this job, which kind of made my decision a little easier. I’m with him on everything from citizen journalism to how old and crusty newspapers are getting– and they’re frankly a little arrogant also.”

Bry also had to search to find political reporter Andrew Donahue, who after breaking stories about the stories on the city’s early pension-underfunding for the San Diego Daily Transcript, had ventured off on a year long stint to Costa Rica. Donahue said he believes absolutely he is in competition with the San Diego Union Tribune. He said his goal is to scoop them once a week when possible.

“We’re trying to go after the stuff that isn’t being covered at all- what that is we’re still trying to figure out. Right now there’s lots going on in our city government so it’s a great opportunity for us,” he said. “Maybe that’s something we’ll look back on and say (the site’s initial success) wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”

Lately Voice’s attention and readership has been boosted by in-depth coverage of San Diego’s mayoral election. And Bry said she is considering expanding a dialog between candidates and readers during the month leading up to the July 26 election.

Yet, local media reaction to Voice’s launch has been mixed.

Sign On San Diego, the online presence of the San Diego Union Tribune, doesn’t view Voice of San Diego as a potential usurper of their readership. Robert Hawkins, Sign On San Diego’s morning editor, said he thinks the sites serve different purposes.

“There’s a feeling of no competition whatsoever,” he said. “The point of their site is to create a dialog and discussion about San Diego, and our interests are both commercial and journalistic in informing people of San Diego.”

Hawkins added, “I worked for Neil Morgan, who I have nothing but the highest estimation for. If they can inspire people to take a stake in the future of San Diego, that’s a terrific thing.”

But alternative weeklies haven’t been as complimentary.

A columnist who pens under the name “Ms. Beak” for San Diego CityBeat welcomes an alternative voice in the community.

“I think their mission is to provide an outlet for people who don’t think the local daily newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, provides much of an outlet. A lot of people agree with them,” she said in an e-mail interview.

But she isn’t about to endorse Voice’s content, either.

“The jury is still out. I think a lot of it is fairly mainstream. They want to be seen as serious and thoughtful, which can also translate to boring and unremarkable. I have yet to see one article that made me stop what I was doing and rush to the site to read it.”

Jim Holman, editor of the San Diego Reader, said that although he has not actually read the Voice of San Diego’s content, he thinks that without blogging, the site will have a difficult time attracting the targeted online audience.

“Neil Morgan- he’s not young and hip. That’s all that’s relevant here,” said Holman. “He has a lot of respect in the community, but not with the younger set. They don’t have those people that are doing cool blogging stuff on the web.”

But in a recent column, Ms. Beak criticized Voice’s content for being too green.

“According to the bios on the site, there are only two reporters with any depth of journalistic experience, which is going to make it tough to ‘be a credible source for relevant news and information,’” Ms. Beak wrote. “Many of the stories so far have the faint ring of a social-studies term paper.”

Bry, however, is proud of her recruitment effort. The staff is not without talent, she said, and they’ve earned the fellowships, awards and bylines to prove it. Bry, who earned her reporting chops at the Sacramento Bee for 18 months before moving onto the L.A. Times, said she expects most of the younger staff will move on after a few years of experience at Voice.

Non-profit news

Although the site will sell advertising space, (which Bry compares with the way a museum sells items in its gift shop) its nonprofit status seems to go hand in hand with its mission to remain nonpartisan and independent. The nonprofit news model seems to appeal to other parts of the nation as well. Though grants, the Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism established J-Lab, an institution which “helps news organizations and citizens use new information ideas and innovative computer technologies to develop new ways for people to engage in critical public policy issues.”

It recently awarded 10 “New Voices” grants as part of a pioneering program to seed innovative news ventures. Voice of San Diego did not qualify because they had already launched, but Executive Director Jan Schafer said J-Lab received 243 applicants, who had to qualify as either nonprofit or educational/institutional during the 10-week window that submissions were accepted.

“What we saw in our new voices proposals a great deal of concern from communities, some geographic, some ethnic, some small, that they were not being covered adequately by mainstream media. We saw a real passion by the people who were saying if they’re not going to cover us, we’re going to cover ourselves.”

Schafer also said nonprofit media outlets can become competitive in big markets.

“I have become a big fan of the Gotham Gazette, run by the Citizen’s Union (Foundation of the City of New York.) And I think they cover news in New York City, especially elections, as well as better than The New York Times or News Day. So, I think there’s potential for good journalism there.”

Beyond the next few years, Bry said the future of the site isn’t certain. Will Voice of San Diego be regarded as a well-funded anomaly or one of the early pioneers in a nonprofit news revolution?

J-Lab’s Schafer said the question applies to larger media organizations, who may eventually catch on, as well.

“What if citizens were shareholders and you bought a share in the paper, and in return you got participatory opportunities, like to produce content or sit on the advisory board,” said Schafer. “It’s an untested model so I don’t think we know the answer to that. But there’s also nothing that says citizens don’t want progressive reporting.”

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