Rust Belt Newspaper

[Jim Russell]

Another good idea from Richard Longworth:

Here’s a potentially money-making idea. The Tribune could launch a Midwestern newspaper, a sort of regional [Financial Times] that covers both the Midwest and the globe with true quality journalism, and would work hard to link the Midwest to the globe. It would be smaller in size, with considerably higher newsstand and subscription prices, less reliant on advertising, devoid of the kind of Dear Abby features that bring in readers now. . . . This would be an elite paper, sure. But it would inject global knowledge into a region that desperately needs it. And who knows, it might be read by local editors and reporters who could be inspired to do some of the same sort of reporting on their own back yards.

[john morris]

This is a great and honestly, very obvious idea!! Why hasn't this been done-- at least as an online experiment? The reason is sadly, that a lot of big players in the region feel it wouldn't get enough readers because folks are only interested in their own hometowns.

In fact media in the region seems to have become more hyperlocal and introverted. Years ago, The New Art Examiner was a Chicago based magazine which covered art across the region, but it folded. There were also several other attempts at this and now we don't even have blogs or online media doing this.

If the region wants to slip of the earth- that's fine but just don't bitch about it. A lot of people here don't seem too interested in the wider world and now they act shocked that the rest of the world feels the same way about them.

[Dan Knauss]

John said: "In fact media in the region seems to have become more hyperlocal and introverted."

Does hyperlocal = introverted or necessarily tend in that direction?

What if people are physical, relational beings who can't really "care" fully or authentically about remote and abstract things--especially ideas. What if we can't even understand things that are "distant" unless they can be related by analogy to something that is very "close to home?" And on the level of rational self-interest, if I'm a stakeholder in X, why should I spend time/energy/resources on Y? First I'd have to see some connection between the two.

If that's how we tend to think, then probably the only way I'm going to "care" (i.e., invest time studying) about some issue in Cleveland is if I see how it relates to something similar in Milwaukee. I might need someone else to point out the issue and the relationship.

I like this aspect of Longworth's supposal and also GLUE's interest in getting people to think more regionally, but I also think you can only get people to come at broader concerns via the local. If that looks parochial and myopic, maybe it is, but maybe it's also just the reality of being an individual in a certain place and time where a finite range of particular ideas and experiences shape one's perspective.

[john morris]

Another major reason facing major old school papers is honestly one of cost. These papers employ reporters, protected by union contracts and work rules that don't come cheap. This wasn't a big factor, when there was little competition from other media and when much of the region was better off. But as the cash drains away, it leaves papers unable to experiment or try new things. The safest bet is to dedicate %50 of the paper to local sports.

That's why a lot the best reporting out there is showing up on blogs and websites, which are mostly volunteer run.

[Jeramey Jannene]

I think you've proposed a noble idea, but I definitely don't think a newspaper model for it could work. Even as a weekly I think it might be a tough sell.

What about as a journal? Posting things online inbetween?

What about aggregating existing articles into a source? Build your own online newspaper and distribute it to the masses? Use a service like Del.icio.us and something like this would be easy.

Newspapers simply don't make money right now. It would be a huge uphill battle.

Doing your own thing would be a great start.

[john morris]

Yes, Jeremey- that's the kind of thing that I think can be done right now. Well, actually- it could have been started years ago.

The general rule of transformation and change is to generally bet on the new models and players. Old media actors were well adapted to a certain time and place. A few, like the NY Times, are likely to get it and change, but the bulk of the species is headed for extinction or extreme transformation.

[Dan Knauss]

This is a great goal, but Longworth is not the guy to engineer the practical means of achieving it. What he's got down cold is how midwestern business and political leaders--and midwesterners in general--should be thinking about the economic arena in the 21st century. What he doesn't have is a 21st century grasp of media to complement his economic vision, but maybe he could get one.

Goal:
Create and sustain an influential Midwestern/Great Lakes regional publication with 1st class journalism that contextualizes and "does the news" in a way that integrally connects the local with the regional and the global. The ultimate goal is really to model and inculcate new habits of thought where people reflexively value and consider the regional and global aspects or implications of a "local" topic.

Ways to do this that could work:
Lose the faulty assumptions about media and people/groups/audiences. The idea of printing a paper, selling subscriptions, and not being tied to an advertising revenue model is a non-starter for several reasons:

1) Advertising is steadily shifting from print to online and other electronic media. Online ad revenues have about exceeded those from print ads and are expected to exceed them in the next few years.

2) Subscription-based newspapers are steadily losing subscribers, advertisers, and revenue. The expectation and reality is, most content is free. If your newspaper doesn't operate under a defacto GPL or CC license or push me the content I want for free, then I'll go somewhere else, maybe have Google do this for me.

Important Exception to #2: newspapers, news magazines, or news journals that serve a niche, such as the building trades or the general business world. These publications can still make it and grow on a subscription model because their audience or "reading community" is different. In the business world there is a perceived material benefit to reading publications like the WSJ and a culture of expectations that talented and ambitious people will read them. Apart from the New York Times, few dailies can rely on a sufficiently large base of readers with such "elitist" attitudes.

This is another reason daily newspapers are dying out, and anyone trying to start a new publication should take note of it. Many of the dailies have historic and ongoing roots "downtown," and you know what that means in the rustbelt. Positioned where they are, and seeing what they can see from that vantage point--not to mention the daily commute--the people who run and staff the dailies perceive their revenue problem to be that they are a bourgeois urban institution in an urban environment the bourgeoisie has abandoned, is still abandoning, and is usually hating on in the media, principally "talk radio." The journalist class dumbly concludes they must follow this audience or market if it kills them, and it probably will. They aim more and more to be relevant to the largely exurban/suburban middle-class audience that is a product of post-industrial economic and cultural politics, i.e. "white flight." This audience is typically hostile to urbanism and the urban center for a variety of reasons; it is often centered on a politics of anti-regional cooperation where the urban and suburban counties are situated as mortal enemies. This audience tends to exhibit the most acute forms of myopia that Longworth wishes to overturn. (See James Howard Kuntsler on the "lumpen bourgeoisie" and "lumpen leisure.")

Point: this is also a large part of Longworth's hypothetical newspaper's audience. These are people he wants to reach and change. How? The urban daily newspaper is going to chase and pander to the soccer moms a

[Dan Knauss]

[post was cut off while editing. the rest:]

The urban daily newspaper is going to chase the soccer moms and NASCAR dads in an attempt to choke down their limited horizons and characteristic prejudices. Real news, local news, and anything smacking of urbanism is scarce.

I think you probably can't reach this demo and can't succeed as a business (let alone in a bid for social influence) by producing "broccoli" media where the incentive to purchase and consume it is that it is "good for you." Imagine NPR locking you out of their "content" until you pay for it. NPR is broccoli media (which has gotten a lot more "fun" over the years with some cost in substance), but they can get by on dishing out free content and then guilting their most regular listeners into becoming righteous payers-for-the-privilege-to-eat-broccoli. I don't think the typical Wall Street Journal or Financial Times reader will do this.

The better, viable model is to get enough startup capital to fund a small staff capable of elite, groundbreaking journalism that is also hip and committed to online-only publication without the traditional fence between it and readers--who may also be "citizen journalists."

I think something like this could not only succeed but knock off some of the weak sisters in the daily news business that do not understand and even resist how the web and open source ethos is forcing them to change or die. Subscriptions are out of the question except for unique content and/or services that have a utilitarian value to people. General news and information has to be free, particularly if it is stuff you want people to digest and use.

[Kenneth Thompson]

So i know who i am by what i read, watch and, now, blog..
Its hard to argue with the idea that the people of the rustbelt have turned inward and appear to be afraid of engaging the larger world- once the world came to them, but no longer. so its time to shun it.
how you open up minds to a larger set of possibilities is no simple process. certainly media has to play a role.
for example- has anyone from chicago gone to mexico to write about the places people are leaving behind for a chicago audience? has anyone suggested that we have much in common with other parts of the world that the invisible hand of the market decides to drop? is anyone writing about global forces and suggesting ways forward for rust belt americans that go beyond either becoming an entrepreneur or struggling to hold on to an increasingly archaic job? we are the new appalachia- and we need to see that its in our totality that the nation needs us, not in our individual desires. and that has to be reflected in the media. our media..

[Dan Knauss]

FYI:

A PASSION FOR PLACE
New Pamphleteers/New Reporters: Convening Entrepreneurs Who Combine Journalism, Democracy, Place and Blogs The Journalism That Matters Minnesota gathering: Wed.-Fri. June 4-6, 2008 Minnesota Journalism Center at the Univ. of Minnesota
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/minnesota/flyer.pdf
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-mn-placeblogger

The NEXT NEWSROOM: A business plan, an organizational framework, and a creative commitment to launch a new model for gathering local news in a community where 21st century citizens work together with committed journalists to strengthen civic life with the aid of digital technology.
http://journalismthatmatters.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/jtm-busine...

http://www.mediagiraffe.org/artman/publish/article_579.shtml
Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive -- A Digital Literacy Guide for the The Information Age, is a falling-off-a-log-easy-to-read guide to how to be a Web 2.0 reporter. Written by Mark Briggs, an assistant managing editor at the Tacoma [Wash.] News Tribune, with two collaborators, it's available as a free download under the Creative Commons license. It's a 132-page, hands-on, all-you-need-to-know guide to multimedia reporting.

[Jim Russell]

Dan,

You make a number of good points, but I don't know much at all about running a newspaper or putting out a magazine, virtual or otherwise. However, I do have a deep appreciation of blogging as an efficient medium for knowledge exchange. For a variety of reasons, we bloggers invest considerable energy in writing about economic development and most of us do not receive any financial renumeration for our efforts. I suggest forming a Rust Belt Globalization blogging network. I think we can fill the niche Dick describes.

[Dan Knauss]

The difference between blogging and an online "newspaper" is marginal to nonexistent depending on how it is done. Take Buffalo Rising, for instance, a flagship case for citizen journalism startups -- and evidently a profitable model.

Provide enough content with sufficient quality or by whatever means secure a large, loyal audience and/or key/elite niches, and you can acquire a player's position in the media market. Then you've got a part in high-level public discourse, a means of influence.

I think the basic recipe to create this is a site that looks good, is at least functional if not cutting-edge in its software, and the ability to post a decent quantity of quality writing that adheres to professional standards for research, writing and editing. Get a few scoops or otherwise can't-miss stories and you are on the map. Until this stuff happens more and gets done by fairly traditional business/financing means, it is an underdog story about media mavericks, which helps a lot.

[Dan Knauss]

You could also do this in a much more dispersed way than my last comment outlines. Just organize a blogging network (e.g. rustbelt bloggers) by establishing a central node to aggregate everything, establish membership protocols, put in a press kit. Then people by doing their own thing might cooperate in ways that bring wider influence. E.g., Cleveland does something smart with transit, or a good plan falls through for some reason, and bloggers in Detroit and Milwaukee follow the issue, recommend things for their own cities based on what they learn from Cleveland, and this is all done in a way to grab media, policy expert, and decision maker attention in other cities or at the national level.

The main thing is just to create a new section of the public sphere that other sections have to or ideally want to spend time listening / interacting with... You could go so far as to organize email/letter/phone campaigns or cooperate with advocacy groups that do that.