Notes about the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 4

Is this the post-newspaper future of local news?

What might a good, post-newspaper local news organization look like? What content would it offer? How would it be staffed and funded?

As market resources dwindle and online news consumption increases, producers of local journalism will experiment with a variety of forms. It’s possible we’ll all be getting our local news from bloggers. It’s possible newspapers—looking and acting like magazines—will survive as a viable form. It’s possible local public radio stations will become the primary local news organizations—with radio, Web, print and video offerings.

I don’t know enough about how online advertising works, about the costs of news production or the habits and preferences of news consumers to predict what’s likely to succeed newspapers. But I do know cities will suffer if there’s no good local journalism of the right scope, depth and frequency.

I also know I’ve been daydreaming about what the future of urban journalism might look like. Here are some highlights.

There’s a fabulous, ambitious online news site. Most of what you got from a local newspaper, you’ll get here: news and feature stories about all things local—politics, business, crime, culture and sports. You’ll find obituaries and weather forecasts, too. Photos. Video clips. It’s updated 24/7/52. What you won’t get here is national and international news from wire services. This is all local. The site is uncluttered, easy to read and navigate, and contains only a few discreet, non-up-popping ads. Every article and every photo are easy to print, and there’s free access to the archives. This site is the news organization’s flagship site, and it links to all the content described below.

A real newspaper for Sundays. For old-fashioned newspaper readers, this is the real thing: news printed on paper, available at newsstands or delivered to your door. While this paper contains a summary of the week’s news, its serious fare is mainly devoted to providing in-depth analysis and background on major local issues. But Sunday reading can’t all be serious, which is why the paper contains lots of cartoons and other interesting and fun stuff to read. All the paper’s content—except for the peppermint scent of its entertainment section—is available at the flagship site, too. The paper is free, although there is a charge for home delivery.

An audio-visual department. Which produces audio and video supplements to the news content, but also creates stand-alone documentaries about local places, people and issues. The digital documentaries—some of which use computer generated animation—are also used at public forums sponsored by the news organization and are broadcast on local radio and televisions stations.

E pluribus, opinion. There is no official editorial position of the news organization. But there are plenty of regular columnists and invited commentators. Most of these opinion writers are locals, but experts from outside of the community are frequently asked to comment on or provide advice about local issues. Site editors frequently post collections of downloadable background materials and links to hot opinion topics.

A city guide like you’ve never seen before. This guide doesn’t list restaurants and bars. It doesn’t describe local shopping districts. It’s a power guide, and what it does is explain the city’s formal (government) and informal (lobbyists, interest groups, activists, opinion leaders) power structure. It summarizes the key issues facing the city, and profiles the major people and groups involved with those issues. The guide offers lots of advice from battle-tested activists—locals and outsiders—about how to get city hall to listen. It’s available in print and online. Both versions are free, and the print version is mailed to every registered voter in town.

Users contribute content and feedback. While the professionally produced content is carefully distinguished from content produced by users, user-generated content and feedback is everywhere. Comments on articles. Polling on issues. Ranking of articles. Frequent requests for story and photo ideas. Posting of user generated photos and video clips. Reports on what local bloggers are saying. As part of the opinion pages, there’s a “soap box” section that allows anyone to post comments about anything of any length, subject only to minimum civility standards.

It’s funded a lot like public radio stations are. Generous local philanthropists and hugely successful membership drives provide the bulk of funding. The online news site and the Sunday paper both run ads, but the number and size of the ads are minimal in compared to current commercial newspapers and their Web sites. Firewalls separate the revenue side from the editorial side. Everybody involved with this news organization regards local news as a vital public service, not a moneymaking enterprise. (Yes, there’s a bit of snobbery about that.)

Produced by city-loving professional journalists. Because it takes a lot of resources and expertise to reliably produce good journalism—and this includes everything from news briefs to in-depth articles, from photos to info graphics—this news organization employs professionals. But not just any professionals. Apply here only if you have some talent, and can honestly claim at least these three things: 1. Cities baffle and intrigue you, and you want to figure out how they work; 2. You like complexity, but you really like explaining complicated things in an accessible and witty way; and 3. You love cities, even if it’s sometimes a tortured love.

* * *

Well, that was my latest daydream about a possible local news organization in a post-newspaper world. I’d like to know how others see the future of urban journalism. Please add your predictions, your daydreams as comments to this post.

This is the forth--and final--part of a series of posts about the future of urban journalism. Read the rest of the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

(Photo from Flickr user Joe Thorn. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Notes about the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 3

Urban journalism: a new focus for civic philanthropy?

People in cities want public art. They want zoos. Orchestras. Parks. Museums. Soon, a critical mass of them will want good urban journalism. And, just as they fund the other amenities, civic philanthropists will soon be funding your local news.

Here’s what I’m predicting: in the not so distant future, civic philanthropists looking for high impact ways to benefit local communities will start aggressively funding non-profit organizations dedicated to producing professional journalism about local issues. They will do this because, as local for-profit newspapers die or shrink, they will realize how important good public service journalism—the stuff newspapers used to fund and produce—is to the vitality of their communities.

Or at least we should be hoping this is what happens.

Many business analysts think its increasingly unlikely that newspapers as we know them now will survive much longer. This is—as I’ve said in earlier posts in this series—a problem for cities.

Daily newspapers do a lot of work for cities, including the critical job of supplying public service journalism about local issues. These types of stories and reports about important political, economic and social matters will be extinct—for the most part—when newspapers are gone. Bloggers and citizen journalists, even the most extensive and liveliest networks of them, can’t replicate the depth or frequency of what local newspapers once produced.

Why should we be hoping for civic philanthropists to rescue local news? Surely if local news is so valuable someone will figure out a way to make money from producing it. There are tons of suggestions out there about how to do this.

From what I can tell, these suggestions sort themselves into two approaches.

One approach wants to change newspapers into lean, mean elite magazines. Under this model, newspapers embrace their smaller scale. They publish weekly, not daily. They celebrate a more limited scope. They concentrate on excellence. They make money like some magazines do—by appealing to an elite audience and selling high-priced, highly targeted advertising.

The other approach seeks to make money reporting and analyzing local news in an online format. This usually involves dumping print altogether, but mixing traditional newspaper-like content with blogs and other features that allow readers to post comments, report on happenings, rank and share content and upload photos and video.

Each group of suggestions might well result in a sustainable business model for some form of local news purveyor. Many people recommend blending the two approaches. But I don’t think either approach (blended or not) could sustain a daily package of comprehensive and credible coverage of local issues. Producing such a package is expensive. Without sufficient resources, it just won’t be possible to match the scope and depth of what local newspapers used to offer.

I’m not a business analyst. My sense of the economics necessary to support this kind of daily news package is based on informal impressions gathered from what I read in the papers and online.

With that caveat, here’s why—more specifically—I’m skeptical of the sustainability of these approaches.

While the make-it-a-magazine approach might work for newspapers with national circulation, I’m less convinced that smaller markets could support this. After all, weekly newspapers and even monthly local magazines are struggling now too.

The prospects of the online approach are perhaps more attractive, but most local newspapers have significant online portals now—and while they have improved revenues—revenues are flattening. More profoundly, though, the trouble with relying on online advertising revenues for a local paper is that local advertisers aren’t as willing to pay as much for web views as they are for paper subscribers: the revenue stream just isn’t as thick.

And thanks to Craigslist and other free or near-free online classified ad web sites, both approaches no longer have access to that formerly rich revenue vein for newspapers.

If my guesswork is right, we’ll have to look outside the market to fund the kind of professional urban journalism that cities need and deserve. That’s why we’ll need civic philanthropists.

Journalists are already exploring new ways to finance their work. Spot.Us uses a crowdsourcing model to match story ideas with journalists and donors to fund the work. ProPublica calls itself a non-profit “newsroom” that produces public service investigative journalism funded by a number of foundations and philanthropists. The Center for Public Integrity is much the same. Foundations have been funding journalism about particular issues for years. The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, for example, funds journalism about health issues.

The model I like best for funding local public service journalism at the right scale is the multifaceted one used by National Public Radio. NPR funds itself with grants from foundations, corporate underwriters and membership drives. Of course, to maintain credibility and independence, non-profit local news purveyors would have to erect effective firewalls of separation between the editorial and fundraising sides of their operations—much like NPR does.

The reason I like this model best is that it seems most likely to provide the kind of stability and resources that are needed to produce professional public service journalism over the long-term. The other models alone—crowdsourcing or funding for specific kinds of coverage—are either inherently unreliable or too ad hoc for this purpose.

Not only could the NPR model work to fund urban journalism, I actually think it will work. I think a critical mass of both elitist wealthy civic philanthropists and regular middle-class city residents would be happy to help support quality public service journalism for their community. Testing this hypothesis right now—in the middle of a deep economic downturn—might temper my optimism, but I’d be willing to bet on its near-term future success.

In any case, as local newspapers fade and leave a void of public service journalism, civic philanthropists now have a new opportunity to do good for their communities.

This is the third part of a series of posts I’m writing about the future of urban journalism. The next--and final--post will be a sketch of what a post-newspaper local news organization might look like (if I had my way). Read the rest of the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4.

For excellent articles about journalism and its future, check out American Journalism Review, Poynter Online and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

(Photo credit: A screen grab from ProPublica's site on December 19, 2008.)

Notes about the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 2

Bloggers and citizen journalists don't have all it takes

As local newspapers die or shrink into specialized magazines and web sites—as they shed reporters, editors, librarians and other staff to cut costs and adapt to much smaller revenue streams—it seems reasonable to anticipate that cities will experience a net loss in coverage of local news.

But maybe that’s wrong.

It’s possible bloggers and citizen journalists will pick up the slack.

They are, after all, already a major presence in many localities. In fact, I’d be surprised to find a city anywhere that didn’t have a network of local-issue bloggers and citizen journalists. In some places, a few of these volunteers probably out-hustle and out-write the paid print journalists.

City residents also have access to lots local information through aggregator web sites like Yelp, outside.in, CrimeReports.com and EveryBlock.

(I’m ignoring local television news coverage, which is—as far as I can tell—universally very thin when not actively harmful. Local radio is a bit more promising, though many stations have been cutting or eliminating local news coverage for years.)

Despite bringing enthusiasm and talent to local news coverage, the volunteer online media corps and its aggregator helpers just don’t have—in my view—what it takes to replace what newspapers provide (or used to provide) for a city: a daily package of comprehensive and credible coverage of local issues and happenings.

It takes a lot of resources, skills and experience to put together such a package every day. Volunteers—even networks of them—can’t do it reliably every day for years and years.

OK, so volunteers can’t replace professional newspaper people. What about local news web sites—such as, for example, Chi-Town Daily News and Urban Milwaukee (both of which got picked as examples because I happen read them every so often)—that employ (and pay) professional reporters and freelance journalists? Aren’t these sites already doing what local newspapers do for cities?

In part, they are.

On some issues, they seem to be doing a better job of covering the news than their local newspaper competitors.

But in general neither—from what I can tell—has the volume, breadth or depth of coverage as their local papers. And neither seems able to fund in-depth investigative reporting, though Chi-Town Daily News—a non-profit organization—has done some focused, smaller-scale investigative reports.

Sites like these could evolve into what I’d consider full-fledged replacements for local newspapers. But because they’re not there yet, I think cities are likely to suffer from the loss of newspapers as we know them now.

If you care about cities, you should care about the post-newspaper future. You should—I think—not expect too much of bloggers and citizen journalists, but instead hope for--and perhaps help to build--a well-funded and professional future for urban journalism.


The résumé of an urban journalist

The sample résumé that follows illustrates (with slight exaggeration for purposes of emphasis) the skills, experience, education and interests the new breed of urban journalists should have.

Clark Kent
101 S. Hero St.
Metropolis, OH 00007
(555) 666-7777

Objective

Position as a paid reporter for a major city news and information hub.

Skill highlights

• My writing brings clarity to complex subjects, and is fun to read.
• I can conceptualize and create a variety of infographics.
• I know how to create and use many kinds of databases.
• My command of statistics, including multiple regression, is impressive.
• I am a master of applications commonly used online.
• I know how to get around a library, and how to search online.
• I understand urban economics, government budgeting and the process of policymaking.
• I smile and interview subjects melt, and tell all.
• My ability to see through lies is amazing.
• I am an excellent digital photographer, videographer and voice recorder.
• I grok every point Jane Jacobs made about what makes cities tick.

Employment history

Daily Planet, Metropolis, OH
Part-time reporter, 2007 to present
Reported on variety of local government issues.

Justice League, Happy Harbor, RI
Research analyst, 2005 to 2007
As part of team, helped research and write a major report about overburdened juvenile justice system in Gotham City.

Legion of Super-Heroes, Comics, D.C.
Web designer, 2003 to 2005
Developed an online interactive timeline of all the Legion’s members and their exploits.

Education

Bachelor of Arts, History, 1998 – Great Little Liberal Arts College
Master of Public Policy, 2001 – World Class State University
Journalism Training Certificate, 2002 – Mass Media Trade School

Personal information

Interesting fact: I was raised in Kansas, but born on another planet.
Favorite authors: Jane Jacobs, Edward Tufte and David Macaulay.
Hobby: aerial photography of cityscapes.

--30--

This is the second part of a series of posts I’m writing about the future of urban journalism. The next post will be about how to fund the kind of urban journalism that cities need and deserve. Read the rest of the series: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4.


(Photo from Flickr user arellis49. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Notes about the Future of Urban Journalism, Part 1

Demise of newspapers is opportunity to re-invent urban journalism

When I read recently about how the Christian Science Monitor will soon become the first major national newspaper to replace its daily print edition with a web site, I wondered when I’ll read about the first city to lose its last remaining print newspaper.

Newspapers once provided a viable way to fund journalism about cities. But as readership and revenues from advertising decline, this business model is failing. The prospect of newspaperless cities is real. If nothing takes over the role formerly played by newspapers cities will lose something important.

Think of what a newspaper does for a city.

With news articles and opinion pieces, it provides information and context for residents about what’s happening in the city. Those same articles and editorials when combined with photos and captions, obituaries, lists of personnel changes, classified ads, sports statistics, restaurant reviews and more comprise a daily scrapbook of city life. The multiplicity of functions and forms that all come together in one physical “space” make the newspaper a kind of city itself.

Guide, scrapbooker, metaphor. Every city needs a newspaper – or other form of media—that plays those three roles at a minimum. For the most part, I’d say that even bad local papers—and there are lots of them—perform these basic functions. But as someone who loves cities, I think cities deserve more and better than the basic journalism they’ve been getting lately from the current crop of faltering and shrinking for-profit newspapers.

I’d like to see newspapers (or whatever media form succeeds them) play an additional role for cities: cupid. Which is to say I want to start reading urban journalism that makes people fall in love with city living.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that urban journalists become civic boosters or chamber-of-commerce shills. What I want to read is professional journalism about cities that is motivated by a deep understanding of and love for what makes cities such vital places to live. As I conceive of it, journalists with these motives would not shy away from covering the problems of the city, but instead would be determined to confront them.

Journalists in love with the city would breathe new life into how urban issues are covered. As readers, we’d probably start learning more about infrastructure, about zoning codes, about income diversity, about sidewalks, about the potential energy and resource efficiencies of density, about architecture, about what makes a shopping district pulse, about the importance of well-designed public spaces, about traffic planning, about agglomeration effects.

And because these journalists would be motivated by their passion for cities to attract their fellow citizens’ attention, we’d probably be reading much more creative and interesting journalism about the city than we typically get in newspapers these days. (Of course, there is some good urban journalism being done out there now. Check out Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space's collection of "great urban journalism" links. Scroll down a bit on the right column.)

So, is the demise of newspapers as we know them a good thing for cities after all? Possibly.

But the fact that local newspapers are increasingly incapable of making enough money to support good journalism is hardly good news for cities. It’s also worrisome that there’s no obvious successor to newspapers –and the key roles they play for cities—on the horizon.

Still, the slow death of newspapers does create an opportunity to reinvent and reinvigorate urban journalism—or at least to think about how to do that.

This is the first in a short series of posts I’ll be writing about the future of urban journalism. The next post will be about how bloggers and citizen journalists, while useful and inventive, don’t have all of what it takes to replace the loss of real journalists writing for newspapers. Read the rest of the series: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

(Photo from Flickr user Pierangelo Rosati . The original full-sized version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)