A publishers note to Aaron Crowe’s piece on the future of Bay Area Newspapers.

Spot.Us is learning and evolving all the time. Anyone that has followed the project from the beginning (a mere wiki only six months ago) can attest to this. Aaron’s piece posed specific lessons that I want to reflect on both for the sake of this story and for the project moving forward.

The Meta-ness of it all: Something to avoid

Ever since Assignment Zero, which I worked on with Jay Rosen and NewAssignment.net, I have been sensitive to meta projects. I’ll never forget the quixotic looks I received trying to explain that Assignment Zero was using “crowdsourcing methods to report on where crowdsourcing is happening.”

My spidey-sense went off the first time I read Aaron’s pitch. To the its credit – it was originally inspired by a tip. It received donations while I was contemplating taking it down, so I decided to ignore my gut reaction. In the end, however, I think journalism’s challenge is to remain relevant to the larger community – not our own internal concerns. Combine that with the fact that Spot.Us is a journalism experiment and the following sentence becomes true.

“An ex-reporter for the Contra Costa Times used Spot.Us, an experiment in business models for journalism, was funded by several journalists to report on the future of Bay Area newspapers.”

The Difficulty in Adding Value

I have been thinking a lot about “added value.” If Spot.Us is going to ask people for donations towards journalism then we must have a clear understanding of what the added value of every story will be. We must also find some way of measuring the quality of that product and process.

This is challenging because, as Dave Winer notes, sources today can go direct. I think the update at the bottom of this Scripting News post captures his point:

I was bothered by Clay Shirky’s piece about the death of newspapers… He says that journalism is being replaced by nothing….The problem with this thesis is that while the press has been declining a new decentralized press has been booting up….The sources who no longer trust the journos, or aren’t being called by them when they have something to say, are going direct. This is what replaces journalism.

I agree with Winer to some extent. There are certain types of daily newspaper stories that, to be frank, are replaceable through a combination of sources going direct, citizen journalists making a phone call or two, etc.

Take a recent SF Chronicle story about Spot.Us as an example. Anyone can spend one hour looking at Spot.Us and my blog and come away with the same information. The main added value then is either:

1. Alerting somebody to something they didn’t know about before or
2. Saving time by packaging and condensing information.

Saving time is indeed an added value, but I want Spot.Us to strive for more.

Some stories from traditional newspapers are replaceable through a decentralized press. But there are undoubtedly other reporting projects that require a single reporter to stick to the story for a month or longer so that they produce NEW information that help communities make better civic decisions. Finding new information is an added, perhaps the greatest value of investigative journalism. Other stories have the potential to save time on a magnitude so great that it would certainly be a civic good and added value.

I’m confident some stories are replaceable through the cloud of citizen contributors or sources going direct, just as I am equally confident that for some reporting projects this won’t be enough: Who will go through the city budgets (pages and pages of documents)? Who will spend two weeks doing NOTHING but making phone calls to follow the recyclables? Who will go through 10 years of government loans to a city? Who will continue to knock on the door of the police headquarters to ask questions on behalf of the larger public? Who will take the time to build relationships with inmates, gang members to tell their story?

Most of these tasks require a single person (or team) to stick to the story for a descent amount of time. Without a trust fund – these individuals will have to be compensated for their time so they can make rent and that is where Spot.Us can play a role.

I believe in citizen journalism – I even run a citizen journalism site on the side (cheap plug for Broowaha). Spot.Us, however, is “participatory journalism.” The public is involved and can donate time or money. But at the head of every project is a professional reporter who is accountable for the outcome of the story and I believe they should be compensated.

What follows from all this? What Stories Should Spot.Us Tackle?

Spot.Us needs to focus only on those stories and investigations that are best benefited by original reporting – the stories that would be difficult or impossible to do without somebody taking the lead and sticking to the story.

I think our pitch of “follow the trash” is a good example. What happens to your recyclables differs from city to city. It would require an estimated one-two weeks (minimum) worth of phone calls and reporting to find out. There is no way to automate this. Different handlers can report directly who they pass the recycling to – but

1. That isn’t exactly accountability
2. Knowing what one link in the chain does won’t give context.

These added value stories can be participatory, too.

Take our Oakland pothole story: A reporter is needed to ask questions of the city and find the data on resurfacing the streets – but the public can help us map out where the real problem spots are (a bike pothole hunt is being organized – blog post to come).

But stories that merely require a few phone calls to get pithy quotes from sources just won’t cut it.

The Specific Difficulty of Reporting on Newspapers

Coming back to Winer: Newspapers have always been able to go direct with news about their industry. To say that newspapers are media savvy is a bit pointless – but it means information about the future of Bay area newspapers is either on record within their own organizations (sources going direct) or mere conjecture among journalism insiders.

I could imagine that reporting on the entertainment industry in Los Angeles would be similar, although probably easier to throw around wild rumors.

What this means: The best reporting on the newspaper industry at the moment means getting quotes from individuals letting us know what they are already up to or guessing at what they might do next. And as Winer notes: many of these sources can go direct – hence the “link journalism” section of this story.

Could we have pushed the story further? Of course. Every story can be pushed further because journalism is a process – not a product. Like everything else, this is a living breathing story and we are presenting back to the public what we were able to find in this period of time.

I was particularly happy that this was the first Spot.Us pitch that had blog posts updating readers about the process of reporting. Anyone that followed the pitch could have seen the story take shape.

In that vein we invite anyone within the Bay Area journalism scene to report on what is happening with their local newspaper (or provide some guesses). In many respects this is the final value journalism can provide – creating a forum for further discussion so that sources can go direct and find each other. And I do suspect some bay area journalism insiders are reading this right now.

Giving Credit Where It’s Due

I specifically told the reporter to leave out the fact that the Oakland Tribune and the Berkeley Daily Planet are currently using Spot.Us as a fundraising/community effort. I’ve also been in talks with the SF Chronicle.

This is certainly part of the story as it represents something different newspapers are trying – but I didn’t want to add that extra layer of meta and thought it would be viewed as a cheap plug. So the cheap plug (and disclosure) is here: We hope to be part of the future of SF B ay Area newspapers and are starting to build those relationships.

We were unsuccessful in getting anybody from the San Jose Mercury News or the SF Chronicle to go on record about any plans they have in store. But I do welcome them to divulge them here. In fact, I’d be happy to meet up with them and do a quick video discussing any propositions they might want feedback related to Spot.Us or otherwise.

Moving Onward

There is only one direction to go from here: Forward.

Related posts:

1. Hasta Luego Message from Kara: “Tell them journalism is made of people!”
2. Public Patrons of Journalism – Is There Another Business Model?
3. The Future of Newspapers – May the Reporting Begin
4. LA Spot.Us Announces Managing Editor, Ramps Up for Community Funded Journalism
5. JROTC and Proposition V: Lessons in How Not to Listen