I bitch a lot. I know. My recent post entitled, “‘We can’t find a web editor?’ Bullshit” was a rant about how behind college media is and how I would quit the school publication and start my own gig if I was still in college.
But I don’t like people who bitch and don’t execute. So I’m going to execute.
For those of you who don’t know, I left Publish2 in December. Since then, I’ve been interviewing at big media organizations across the United States. But every interview feels like a battle. I’m trying to convince people of my ideas and my enthusiasm, but am always countered with the question: “But, we’re a newspaper — how do you pull that off when our culture is so naturally resistant to innovation?” Well, at least they’re finally admitting it. That’s the first step to recovery.
When I graduated college in December 2009, I didn’t want to work at a newspaper because I didn’t want to be stifled. Lately, I’ve jumped off my high and mighty tower and decided that if newspapers are going to get anywhere, they need to hire more people like me who can help revolutionize from within (take Greg Linch, for example, hoppin’ on over to the Washington Post after leaving P2. Young brainz permeating big media). But now I’m in a new state of mind: If I want to be a part of the media revolution and help news along its winding journey, I can do that from outside of a traditional newsroom. In fact, I can start my own newsroom.
So here’s the buried lede. I am very seriously considering going back to my hometown of Porterville, California to create a news startup. I’ve bitched enough about, “Oh, I’d do it this way” or, “Oh, you should do it that way.” Time to put my money where my mouth is.
Porterville is perfect for this experiment.
I grew up there. Born and raised. I have 21 years worth of knowledge about the local government, education system, crime, religion, culture… everything. I’m not going to dump myself into a foreign city because the market seems right. I’m going to go to a market I know inside and out.
There is no real local media. The one news outlet in Porterville is the Porterville Recorder, which has decreased in size over the past few years, and has a shaky future since its parent company, Freedom Communications, seeks to sell some or all of its properties. Even if the Recorder does continue to exist, its reporting is shoddy. Take a look at some of today’s homepage headlines:
- Gang Summit addresses problem areas
- Lindsay teen dies in crash
- Oncoming storms will add to lake storage
- Police arrest teen in Tulare murder case
- Main Street fire intentionally set
- Brews flow for good cause
- Amber alert issued for abducted Porterville child
Notice something? These are all reaction pieces. Perhaps because of lacking resources, the Recorder primarily responds to police reports and press releases.
Because of the dynamics of the small community, reporters are walking on eggshells (or so it would seem) when it comes to investigative reporting. Today The Recorder ran the first investigative piece I’ve seen in a while about the overstretched resources of the local emergency room. A few problems with this “investigative” series:
- Today’s headline for the series is: “Meeting the community’s needs.” Boy, does that sound like good PR.
- The reporting has no real value. The first four grafs boringly outline the history of the emergency room, and there’s no nut graf to be found anywhere, seriously. I don’t even know what the point of the piece is.
- Finally, the eighth graf hints at getting to the real problem that should be addressed through this reporting: “But when patients are on gurneys, waiting to be admitted, the wait for a treatment area lengthens — because patients are being observed.” But that issue is quickly overlooked as the story jumps back into facts about the ER. What the?
- The first piece of the series references concerns brought up by local residents on the Facebook page — none of which are further investigated in the piece. Instead, the article looks at the challenges faced by the staff of the ER, which leads to those problems. It’s almost as though the paper is defending the emergency room. Almost as though there are allegiances to be upheld. What about the stories of the people who are turned away from the ER? Where are their voices? It is NOT COOL to only quote spokespeople from the organization being criticized.
I sat down for lunch Thursday with Bill MacFayden, the founder of Santa Barbara’s Noozhawk — a local news site competing against traditional media. He gave me tons of sound advice about starting up a project like this. Notably:
Start with a niche. He noticed coverage of local education in Santa Barbara was lacking, so he dominated that niche when he started three years ago and that was how he initially built up his reader base. His approach reminds me of Jay Rosen’s 100 percent solution: Cover 100 percent of something, anything, but cover it fully. That’s still his most popular coverage topic on the site. I’m going to have to do quite a bit of research before I get started, but I already know taboo topics like gangs and teenage pregnancy are huge, huge issues in the valley, yet get no play in the local media (unless prompted by a press release).
Do your research. This isn’t something I can just jump into. I need to learn about the broadband saturation (since this is online-only), talk to advertisers to find out what kinds of needs I can fill for them, and talk to local community members to find out what coverage is lacking, where they go to find top news, etc.
This is the perfect time for me to try something crazy like starting my own newsorg. I’m 21 years old. I don’t have a mortgage or a family. Rent in Porterville is dirt cheap. I can build my own site (WordPress to start with, probably, until I can hire real devs someday). The opportunity is huge within the market I want to target. I can do it better than my competition. And I’m ready to rock it.
A few principles I will stand by during my creation of this project, if I do in fact follow through with it:
- I will never over-work myself or my employees. I know that the hiring of employees is still a long ways off, but I need to get this down from the get-go. I know that burnout leads to pissed off people who secretly despise every conference call and meeting. I plan to pour my heart into this and expect anyone who works with me to pour their hearts into it, but I will never, ever force people to work holidays or 28 days straight. Everyone will get two days a week off, even if it means rotating off-days so that there are always people on call. People can take vacations when needed. No one will be burned out. I will treat them with love and feed them vegan food and give them lots of hugs.
- I want to mentor students. When I was in high school, I had a burning ambition to be part of the Porterville Recorder as an intern, even if it meant copy editing without pay. They refused me. I want to pull students in, even if they suck, and help them get better. I am thinking a joint effort with my high school’s Grizzly Gazette will be a good revenue opportunity for both parties.
- I am all about collaboration. I understand competition is healthy and important, but if the Recorder ever wants to do a joint project, or we want to rope in the Visalia Times-Delta, Tulare Advanced-Register, Bakersfield Californian, and Fresno Bee — I’m 100 percent in favor of sharing information and sources to create high-quality, useful content and applications.
- I will never walk on eggshells. If there is a story to be told, I will get to the heart of it.
- I will represent the voices of all people to the best of my ability.
- I will document the shit out of this. Every decision. Every project. Every new step will have a blog post or a video or a Google doc. I want this to be a huge learning opportunity for everyone who follows me. I want you all to feel like you’re starting this up with me. I am not doing it solo. I want your support and your love and your virtual arms holding me in the middle of the night when I don’t know what I’m doing or where the money will come from to pay my writers.
So, here goes nothin’. Who’s ready to invest in me?
Just saw this through FB and had to come and wish you good luck, especially after reading why. A lot of it sounds exactly like what I’ve been saying to myself since realizing I wanted to come back home to San Antonio and try my own site.
I also considered writing about my process, but I’m going up against some competition and after a lot of internal eval, decided it probably wouldn’t be best if I gave away too much, too soon.
I’m certain I’ll learn something from your path and I hope I can offer something for yours. Let me know if I can help or serve as a soundboard. I wish you the best of luck, but I also know you’ve got a lot of the know-how to make it so.
Thanks, Joe. I thought about you while I was writing this post, actually. I hadn’t heard anything new since our dinner in LA all those months ago. I just checked out NowCastSA, thought, and it looks like it’s thriving. We should swap notes if/when my site takes off. I’d love to get more of your insight.
Good luck with your project, Lauren. Remember local college media, too, such as The Collegian at Fresno State. You may have additional collaboration opportunities there. I look forward to seeing how your project develops!
Ah, great point. I’d love to tap into that source to get the basics for north valley news. I should start a list of potential collaborators. Building up a San Joaquin Valley blog network is definitely on my list of must-dos.
You should put this on kickstarter or spot.us to get some seed funding.
Yes, I was thinking about that. I’d like to do a little more research to have a solid estimate for cost projections first. Thanks for the recommendation.
+1 to Kickstarting it.
Do it!
I seriously contemplated doing the same thing for my small, under-covered hometown, but was stopped mostly by my lack of business knowledge. I’ll be watching closely. BTW, how many hours a week counts as not being overworked? I’d be willing to bet that’ll be your hardest principle to enforce.
- @codytoshiro
I know. It’s going to be tough. I’d like to average a 40 to 50 hour work week, but know that there will be times when that’s just not possible. Hopefully working for me will be so amazing and fun that it won’t matter.
#wishfulthinking
You talked about what your ideas are from a content perspective (great stuff). What are you thinking about from a biz & $$ angle? Just curious.
I have a lot of ideas. Of course, I don’t have a background in business, so my ideas are probably totally crazy, but that’s the post I’m working on for next week. I’ll send it to you when I’ve thought it through a little more.
Great, looking fwd to it!
A lot of people are DMing me and emailing me about the business model. I know it’s shaky so far. The closest thing I have to a business model is this paper I wrote in college: http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=joursp
Well, it sounds fantastic. What you’ll be doing, of course, is good, old-fashioned community journalism – that’s not a bad place to start. William Allen White, after all, won a Pulitzer. Very interested to see how you do it; less interested in the sausage-making (though more Google spreadsheets are, um, tempting) and much more in the execution.
Lauren, if you do this I hope you check out the Placeblogger Angel Fund. We’d love to work with you. http://placeblogger.com/angelfund
Awesome, Lisa. I’ll check it out. Thank you.
The thought of being able to run your own news site is obviously enticing
Especially in a town where you have roots, truly understand local issues and are well-connected to the people, organizations and businesses who are going to make-up your editorial content. I can’t help but wonder though: You’ve stated all the right reasons about why Porterville is a good fit for you, but shoddy reporting is the only reason you gave for why Porterville needs this new website … if that’s the case why not work for The Recorder?
Market selection, as Claudia has already pointed out, is key. I believe there’s a reason why Patch.com hasn’t spread to the Central Valley … maybe it will someday, but it certainly seems like the money isn’t there.
There are, however, examples of these types of independently run, hyper-local news websites working. In Orange County, one of the best examples is Corona Del Mar Today, http://www.coronadelmartoday.com/—a hyperlocal news website in one of the wealthiest communities in America (money for ads, eh eh?). I don’t check it regularly, but I get the impression that the woman who runs this site doesn’t do enterprise journalism.
I’m sure there are plenty of reasons, but one has to be that these types of operations take a lot of work. You’ll basically be running your own newspaper, except you never put the paper to bed. Your site will be 24/7 … when will you even have time to do anything but reactionary reporting (think hamster wheel)? I struggle with this daily, and I have seven freelancer reporters and four columnists to help share my workload. To set your sights on 40-50 work weeks seems unrealistic. Again, money is key!
All this being said, if there is a time to do it, it’s now! You’re young, have tons of energy, passion and brain power. If your trip to Porterville is well-received, it sure sounds like you have a boat-load of intelligent people with lots of advice about how to make this successful
Go Lauren!
Journalist/Designer as entrepreneur! You are willing to invest in Porterville. Is Porterville willing to invest in you? Most techies work 60 hour weeks, but don’t think of it that way. You can play while you work as well and it is tax deductible. For Baltimore’s journalist turned entrepreneur creation check out http://www.baltimorebrew.com/
News is only half the battle. Patch.com demonstrates how hard it is to put together a news platform that is truly creative. Also check out http://whatweekly.com/ which is designer driven. Best of luck, you will need true grit.
Lauren, you’re absolutely on the right track. I know you’re planning on talking to my co-founder at Berkeleyside, Tracey, but let us know if you need any help or encouragement.
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I’d like to talk to you about your idea. New business and startup design is sort of a hobby/passion of mine. I’m not exactly professional, but if I can’t help you, I have countless resources that can…
Hey Lauren! I think your start-up idea is brilliant. Maybe I can join you in a few years to work on the health beat/as an advertising/marketing/PR rep after I get out of the Mizzou JSchool.
Have you considered Kachingle/Spot.us as a possible revenue sources?
Well, I’ll work for you. Also, I’d suggest bootstrapping. Part of the problem with legacy news organizations is debt. Best to start without any.
Keep me in the loop and let me help! Lots of cool folks involved in entrepreneurship at your alma mater that we can connect too as well.
jon