Texas Center For Community Journalism

It’s a question as old as the newspaper industry.

Why should we give away our content?

As community newspapers face a new age of competition from the Internet, the question has become more relevant. For many of us, we have effectively been “giving it away” for years as local radio and television stations get their cues from our newspapers and crib the stories for their own use.

My argument for an active website is not “giving away” the content, but shifting the cost to the advertiser instead of the subscriber. Look that this question: “Which would I rater do, sell you a subscription for $35 a year, or sell an advertiser a daily ad on my Web site for $35 a week?” The math is simple: $35 a year from the subscriber or $1,820 a year from the advertiser.

I am convinced that once your webset “catches on” with the community, you can easily sell more than one ad for your daily news update. The site will be especially attractive during political season when local candidates want their names and pictures before the public every day — not just once or twice a week in your newspaper. And that is all cash business — a tremendous boost to your cash flow. Ask your advertising sales staff to work up “combination” packages for your print and Internet additions and it will result in “plus revenue” for your newspaper.

Why don’t you try it sometime? An election is a good opportunity. For the May 9 local city council and school board elections, put a house ad in your newspaper saying that you will have “live, up to the minute” election returns on your Web site. Ask an influential business leader — the local Ford dealer, a community bank, your hospital or the Dairy Queen — to be the “sponsor” of the live coverage. Make the price attractive, say $100.

After all, you won’t have those results in your weekly paper for four or five days. Even though you have shared the results with your readers on the Internet, your newspaper coverage can be fresh with interviews with the winners and losers as well as great photo coverage of the “courthouse stand-arounds” in the county clerk’s office on election night.

It’s an experiment worth trying — I think you’ll be very pleased with the results.

Move over, Voodoo priestess. The ancient Chinese had it right. The most effective curse is this one: “May you live in interesting times.”

We in community journalism certainly live in the most interesting of times. There have only been a few generations who have been fortunate (?) enough to live in the days when a new medium is being introduced and therefore redefining the old media.

It happened when Gutenberg invented the printing press, which took over dominance from the manuscript culture. Didn’t happen again until the 1920s, when newspapers were threatened by the new medium of radio. And radio had the shortest Golden Age of all, because when it was at its height, TV was invented and began claiming living rooms for itself in the early 1950s.

As each new medium came along, the old media had to redefine themselves and find new roles. When the Internet was invented, we saw email revolutionize personal communication and then search engines redefine how we got information. And now, we realize that one impact of the Net is to make a publisher out of everyone with a computer.

Even 10 years ago, we thought the newspaper — especially in smaller communities — had the market cornered on news and information. To be sure, someone could always start a rival publication, but costs were typically prohibitive.

No more.

Anyone with a computer is now potentially your competition. And if they don’t know how to start a newspaper, or what to put in one, or how to lay out the pages, or where to find news — no worry. There are Websites all over whose entire goal is to show anyone, anywhere how to start a newspaper on the Web.

Some start as blogs, some are primarily opinion journals. Many come and go overnight. But other people discover that with practically no overhead — no reporters, no rent or utilities, no presses — that they can get local names and photos and news and information on the Web and update it daily, and find an audience. And that audience may be your readers.

As they build audience and get more eyeballs onto their pages, they inevitably attract advertisers.

These Internet start-ups are more prevalent on the coasts, but it’s inevitable that we will see more and more in Texas. I asked Texas newspapers about their local Web-only competition recently and here’s a sampling only of what I found. Take a minute to scroll through the list to follow; you will find all kinds of new Texas Webmedia here, but these new publications represent a real threat to printed newspapers in Texas. The level of sophistication varies, from just blogs to legitimate online newspapers, but all represent alternatives to newspapers — and they frequently have more news, more photos, and more local opinion than papers do. Click on as many as you can, and you’ll get a feel for what may be the wave of the future.

Here they are:

• www.sanmarcosmercury.com
• www.newstreamz.com
• www.bastrop-news.com
• www.bastropia.com
• www.fortbendnow.com
• www.InstantNewsWestU.com
• www.forneypost.net
• www.twentypeacefulminutes.com
• www.supportcrandall.com
• www.takebackcombine.blogspot.com
• www.highplainsobserver.com
• www.shelbycountytoday.com
• www.polkcountytoday.com
• www.instantnewskaty.com

And if you’re thinking that even starting a Web paper may be a daunting task for some potential competitors, what if they could just open a franchise operation, complete with all the support they needed? Check out www.hometowntimes.com. As the organization’s Website says: “We’ll show you and support you as you build an audience and support the growth of the local community through innovative, proven advertising packages designed to build your town’s business success, make your neighbors aware of the issues and events of importance to them, deliver local news that concerns your lifestyle, and more features to keep your visitors coming back again and again.”

How serious is this company? HometownTimes launched 513 local online newspapers across the United States in January. It was recently ranked No. 10 in a listing of Atlanta’s Top 25 Franchises.

Have you heard…

• An analysis of circulation figures published in the 2004 Editor & Publisher Year Book showed that of the 9,321 U.S. newspapers listed, 9,104 (97.7 percent) had circulations below 50,000, a common benchmark used to distinguish “big” from “small” newspapers.
  Those 9,104 “small” newspapers reported circulations totaling 108.9 million, compared to a combined circulation of 38.2 million for the 213 “big” newspapers.
  The majority of all newspapers are weeklies, with an average circulation of slightly less than 7,500.
  Among the 1,456 dailies, 1,239, or 85 percent, are small newspapers, and reach about 44 percent of all daily newspaper readers.
• Social media have now overtaken pornography as the No. 1 use of the Internet, according to research by the Institute for Public Relations.
• Ottaway Newspapers has launched electronic editions of its newspapers aimed at cell phone and smart phone users. “Seekers of news and information in our markets should be able to access our content on the platform that either they are most comfortable using, or that is most useful to them at the moment they need to be informed,” said Sean Polay, Ottaway’s product manager for distributed media. Ottaway is using internally developed software to support the initiative. The Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Mass., was the first Ottaway paper to launch the service.

If you had written the word blog just 13 years ago, everyone would have thought you’d made a typo. Maybe you mean blob? Or blot?

How times have changed. Blogs — short for Weblogs — are part of our lives and part of the vocabularies of pretty much everyone who’s halfway Web-literate.

Need proof? Check out these numbers, courtesy of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report:

• Facebook recorded 41 million unique visitors last year. MySpace had 75 million. Blogs had almost 78 million unique visitors.
• 50 percent of Internet users read blogs.
• In 2007, there were 22.6 million bloggers in the United States.
• There are almost 1 million blog posts a day.

In its report, Technorati noted that when it did its first report on blogs in 2004, the typical reaction to the word was, “Huh? Can you repeat yourself?” Four years later, blogs are commonplace.

And newspapers throughout the nation have become a part of the blogging phenomenon. Blogs get more voices into the newspaper, allow staffers to share insights on how the news comes together and how they do their jobs, and allow more coverage of areas far too specialized ever to justify ink on the printed page. Since cyberspace has an unlimited news hole, newspapers can include the blog on fitness tips for the elderly or the news of a six-block area on the east side of town.

Blogs have ended up playing an important role in American life — it was bloggers who brought down Sen. Trent Lott when they reported his off-the-cuff remark about Strom Thurmond. And bloggers who torpedoed Dan Rather for his sloppy reporting of George Bush’s military record. In fact, you can argue that political bloggers have become an integral part of American politics — the Obama campaign obviously used blogging more effectively than anyone else ever has.
For whatever reason, Texas community newspapers have been slow to use blogs extensively.

Roy Robinson, publisher of the Graham Leader, told me in an email that his newspaper has moved slowly because of legal concerns.

“According to our attorney, if our staff were to edit any posted blog, the newspaper would immediately bear 100 percent liability for all blog messages,” Roy emailed me. “His interpretation, as explained to me, is that the newspaper has no exposure for liability on unedited blogs, but if messages are screened and/or edited, the newspaper becomes wholly liable. If his direction is correct — I have since been told it might not be — it’s a bigger risk than we can afford to take.”

And then there’s Elaine Kolodziej, publisher of the Wilson County News, who tells me that the News blogs “get tons of hits.”

“Readers love the interaction,” she wrote.

Elaine said that they have been using blogs for several months now, and they plan to expand their blog offerings, including some from staff members. She notes that they provide for reader feedback on their stories, allowing “community posts that act like blogs.”

“Sometimes they take on a life of their own,” Elaine said.

If you include blogs, of course, it’s important that you keep them up to date. Beth Nelson, editor of the Hays Free Press in Buda, says her paper’s blog readership has suffered “primarily because we have a hard time keeping them fresh and provocative.”

“Our competitors with Web-only papers do more of that kind of thing,” Beth wrote. “As a professional journalist, I find it hard to use blog-style writing.”

The Wise County Messenger uses a different approach: Their staff blogs give readers an insight into the newsgathering process. Check out their blog page, called Making a Mess [referring to the Messenger]. The deck reads “where communication meets community journalism.” The Messenger blogs allow staff members to share a behind-the-scenes look at the stories run elsewhere in the paper and on the Website.

These are just some of the approaches you’ll find in Texas community journalism. Let us know what your paper is doing with blogs and how your community is responding.

An Internet shortcourse on newspaper blogging

• http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/blueplate/issue1/best_nwsps/
  A guide to the best-blogging newspapers in the U.S., including what makes for an effective blogging presence.
• http://ryansholin.com/2008/03/12/10-blogs-your-newspaper-needs-to-rip-off/
  10 blogs your newspaper needs to rip off
• http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090403-135206
  News blogs are becoming the new online newspapers
• http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070423_vaina/
  A study that shows blogs are closer to traditional journalism than you might think
• http://www.newsandtech.com/issues/2006/06-06/nt/06-06_blogging.htm
  About a group that syndicates blogs to newspapers
• http://gawker.com/news/the-new-model/newspapers-now-stuffed-full-of-blogs-but-no-clue-where-to-put-them-304343.php
  Once they have blogs, where should newspapers put them?
• http://www.thebloggingjournalist.com/
  The Blogging Journalist is a great collection of information on blogging in journalism

 

Twitter‘s all the rage lately. The Chicago Tribune “Twitterized” its masthead this month, replacing execs’ names with their Twitter IDs, and Nielsen recently declared it among the Web’s fastest-growing “member community destinations.”

So what’s the big deal? And can it really help a community newspaper?

For a primer on Twitter, check out this USA Today story from last year (ignore the talk about the site’s failing infrastructure, that’s no longer an issue).

Obviously in 140 characters, one can’t do much storytelling, which means the site doesn’t really have many benefits when it comes to storytelling like many new media tools do.

Twitter can still be a great tool, however, when it comes to promoting your site’s content and connecting with your readers.

The best way to learn about Twitter, though, is to just try it. It takes less than a minute to sign up for an account. Check out some of the best newspaper feeds such as the Austin American-Statesman‘s @statesman.

We also have a guide from a few popular members of the Twitterverse at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (@startelegram) that you can download here. That’s courtesy of Eva Ayala (@fwstayala), Andrea Jares (@andreajares) and Kathy Vetter (@klvet).

There are also more links on the Twitter page in our New Media Tools database and I’ll be posting more soon about how to use free services to automate a Twitter feed.

And don’t forget to follow us at @tccj.

If you have any experience with Twitter (good or bad) or advice to share with other community journalists, post it below.

If your teenager takes a bite of dinner and announces that the dish is “sick,” don’t be upset. Sick is a good thing in teenlanguage. It means cool.

As writers, we know that the general semanticists are certainly right when they say that words don’t have meanings — only people have meanings. And meanings change.

King George I of England once looked at the architecture of St. Paul’s Cathedral and told Sir Christopher Wren that his work was “amusing, awful, and artificial.” Wren was delighted. In that day, amusing meant amazing, awful meant awe-inspiring and artificial meant artistic.

Words and definitions certainly aren’t static, but a lot of us didn’t anticipate a change in the meaning of community journalism.

According to Bill Reader of the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, the term “community journalism” is at least 50 years old. It was first used by Kenneth Byerly at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who taught a course — and wrote a textbook — by that name.

And though scholars have written many pages on just what community journalism is, most of us have always seen it as journalism that’s tied to a community — most frequently a smaller town or suburb, but also other types of communities, like the Jewish community or the farming community or a religious or political community.

At the other end of the spectrum were metro dailies. They served large groups and covered news of interest to the city as a whole, including news of the state and the nation and the world.

But remember that word meanings change. Community journalism is no longer associated merely with rural areas, small towns and specialized groups. Now even large media companies realize that community journalism is where it’s at.

What newspapers are turning to community journalism?

The New York Times, for one. Check out this hyper-local Times-sponsored blog. It’s even called The Local.

The editor, Andy Newman, kicked off the first edition with an introductory piece that could have appeared in any small town in Texas:

Welcome to our big little experiment.

Greetings, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. This is your Local speaking. Soon, we hope, you will talk back to it.

Starting today, The Local is an online news site for these communities. But if we build it right together, The Local will be something much more: a glorious if cacophonous chorus of your voices singing the song of life itself in these astoundingly varied and vibrant neighborhoods.

With your input, The Local will tell stories that matter: crime and politics and culture and civic life and everything else. Some stories will be snapshots, mere moments. Others will unfold over days or weeks or marking periods – the birth pangs of a food coop or a high school newspaper, the aftermath of a crime, and, as the unstoppable wave of local gentrification crashes into the unstoppable wave of global economic meltdown, an ever-growing tale of loss and struggle.

Through all this, I will be your co-curator, moderator, referee and Local recruiter. I will also be doing old-fashioned journalism. Because my affiliation means that I can usually get city agencies to at least take my calls, and because I have all day to devote to this stuff, I might be able to get help and answers where you have hit walls.

And that’s not just The New York Times; the Chicago Tribune is also launching a community journalism site, along with a growing list of other metros.

So if community journalism can be practiced in the city or in the country, at a large paper or small, and on the Web or in the dead-tree editions, what then are the real defining characteristics of community journalism?

All I can do is to start the answer and trust the Texas journalism community to add to it, but let’s begin with these bedrock characteristics of what we can call community journalism:

Community journalism is personal. If you’re never likely to run into the people you write about or interview, it isn’t community journalism. If you’re writing about — and for — the folk you attend church with or buy your groceries from or who coach your kid’s Little League team, you’re in community journalism. Besides, in community journalism people can walk right into the newsroom and tell you what they’re thinking.

If you want to cover the complete pageant of your community’s life, what has been called “micronews,” you’re involved in community journalism. Sure, you cover the city council, but you also chronicle high school sports and local church news and the winners of the Bridge tournament and the women’s club meetings and the lunch menus at the elementary school.

Community journalism means you care about what happens in the community. I love the motto of the Mason Valley (Nevada) News: “The only newspaper in the world that gives a damn about Yerrington.” The contents of your paper and Website aren’t just stories, they represent news that can build people up or tear them down. Sometimes you have to uncover wrongdoing, but you don’t do it with a “gotcha” attitude and an eye toward journalism prizes. You’re sensitive to the needs of the community.

Community journalism has a focus — it’s what Charles Kuralt once called “relentlessly local.” Community journalism is the news people care about, because it’s about people they know or events that affect them. Or maybe Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly editor Bernard Stein said it best: “Our job is the everyday lives of ordinary people.”

In all the journalism periodicals, people are debating what community journalism is — is it public journalism or citizen journalism or civic journalism? And can The New York Times engage in community journalism just like the Goldthwaite Eagle?

All of the old definitions of community journalism are changing. So remember what Humpty Dumpty told Alice: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean….”

Dumpty was right. So don’t be surprised as more and more metro dailies come out with announcements that they’re “doing community journalism.”

You probably never realized that you were the wave of the future….

Can you add to my “definition” of community journalism? If you think of something I’ve left out, please post a response.