In order to develop a baseline, I did some estimating and created some crude graphs roughly looking at where my story ideas have come from in each of the first three years of operation.

In late 2009, I was interested in projecting out what types of content a hyperlocal news site might aspire to have, and this feels like a sensible follow up. I should be clear, of course, that these numbers are entirely made up, based on nothing more than a brief perusal of archives and memory.

In short, the two biggest trends I feel have happened are that (a) we rely considerably less on other media than we did when we started and (b) many, many more people reach out to us directly than in the beginning. OK, that may seem obvious.

Perhaps more interesting is my overall assessment that, despite what I might want to believe, relatively few stories are based purely on a hunch, a thesis or an idea of mine. They happen — and I’m proud when they do — but, like journalists have always been, my role is still more to give context and connect dots.

Find the graphs and breakdowns below.

Year One: 2009

Email pitches and press releases: 10 percent

Following up on social media: 10 percent

Other publications: 30 percent

In-person pitches and events: 20 percent

Original ideas: 5 percent

Followup: <1 percent

Outreach to new people: 25 percent

Year Two: 2010

Email pitches and press releases: 15 percent

Following up on social media: 15 percent

Other publications: 20 percent

In-person pitches and events: 20 percent

Original ideas: 5 percent

Followup: 5 percent

Outreach to new people: 20 percent

Year Three: 2011

Email pitches and press releases: 30 percent

Following up on social media: 15 percent

Other publications: 10 percent

In-person pitches and events: 20 percent

Original ideas: 10 percent

Followup: 5 percent

Outreach to new people: 10 percent

A journalist salary bubble may still be lurking somewhere beyond the newspaper right-sizing of the past decade.

We at Technically Philly are in the process of hiring our first reporter — to begin as an independent contractor expected to make something like $30,000 in a 12-month period. That’s a respectable, entry-level salary for a young, hungry reporter in a big market.

Unless you think otherwise. A freelancer friend of mine gave me a little grief, said she had a $30,000 salary when she started in 2004, expecting the total to have gone up in the ensuing years. I tried to remind her that in the years since she started, the momentum on subscription declines and advertising reductions have accelerated, not to mention a recession that stalled, if not shrunk, salary growth.

In short, her argument seemed to redouble my confidence that our small startup, for-profit technology news site was doing alright to budget $30,000 for a young reporter who would focus on reporting, social media and outreach. Her argument did something else though. It made me think there may still be shocks left in this generation-long restructuring in news from higher-yield print monopoly to lower-yield, online competition.

Starting reporter salaries at the Philadelphia Inquirer are something in the arena of $35,000, with benefits, as I understand it. Updated: See the Guild contract details here [PDF]. That’s not great money for a storied big market newspaper brand, but the Inquirer is a union shop so, as I’ve been told, the guild has a structure not unlike you’d expect for a civil servant: steep pay increases with years in.

A business columnist there might be getting north of $130,000, if I understand correctly. It sounds like an experienced reporter for another business publication in town is making between $70,000 and $100,000. Now I’m not suggesting that reporter salaries were ever at that level on average, but I am pointing out that at most legacy brands, there is a pay structure that ties back to a big yield print world.

A friend of mine is jumping from a well-paying, newspaper-backed administration job to a social media-driven role with a big foundation-supported journalism outfit. His salary is probably somewhere in the $60,000 to $80,000 range.

That’s just my concern.

The old pay structures that can grow reporters into six figure salaries are being maintained because of culture, union and logistical concerns. The biggest new celebrated brands of our age — MinnPost, Pro Publica, Texas Tribune, San Diego Voice and the like — are backed by big donors and foundations. Without normal market forces pressed on them, it’s my understanding that they are following the same salary levels of the standard-setting newspaper brands.

I respect greatly the involvement of philanthropic organizations in journalism (of course I do, such funding has helped us do great work), but I think those efforts should be focused on projects, not operations. Projects have ends. Operations are ongoing.) As this funding without normal market pressures impacts this still unsettled industry, I am left with two related questions about reporter compensation. Is there any evidence that the market can (or should) support pay levels of the past? Could foundation funding be protecting a journalism pay bubble?

As I look at the smaller, independent niche news sites that I know well, I see two paths: (a) one is a leaner, more efficient operation that doesn’t pay its reporters the kind of levels the past has prized, and (b) the other is funded entirely by foundations or other deep pockets, and pay reporters rates that are not unlike the past.

Granted everything is cyclical, so as news fractures, I fully expect there to be consolidation once again. With consolidation, presumably comes efficiency and better paid, top talent. There are already years-old glimmers of that, with properties like Gawker Media, which has a portfolio of high traffic sites, driven by content written by bloggers paid largely based on page views. Pre-recession estimates suggested that Gawker writers were getting paid up to $80,000, which would be respectable pay for valued writers at a valued brand.

But, as anyone covering communities know, Gawker is an aberration — a niche conglomerate with big money. I don’t think that will be representative at all.

When we crunch the numbers at Technically Philly, I’m not sure we could ever support the kind of salary figures an established technology reporter for a big legacy brand would demand. And, frankly, I’m not yet sure it should.

The second annual Philly Tech Week will take place April 22-28, 2011, as we announced on Technically Philly recently.

We unveiled our media kit, made impressively by my colleague Brian James Kirk, which you can see here.

The open calendar of events was first held this past April, attracting more than 4,000 people attended at least one of 65 events held throughout the city and surrounding counties during the inaugural celebration. See my roundup of the event series impact here.

The week was officially endorsed and recognized by City Council. A major public-private partnership launched an Open Data repository for the city and Councilman Bill Green unveiled a 10-point plan for improved government transparency through technology. Startups launched during the week, video games were unveiled and educators held the first Robotics Expo in the city.

With more than 50 press hits across newspapers, radio, television and blogs, the week also became an enormous opportunity for the partners involved in making it happen. The week’s 35 sponsors and more than 50 event organizers were able to put their message and organizations in front of 30,000 unique visitors of Philly Tech Week web properties. They were included in the 5,000 print publications distributed in 50 retailers across the city. And they were able to align with the 1,000 social media messages that spanned the event.

This year, April 23-28, 2012, Philly Tech Week will be bigger year’s event, it is expected that more events will be organized with lessons learned from last year, the programming will be made stronger and its impact greater.

We hope to prove true this year’s theme: to make a better Philadelphia through technology. We hope you’ll be a part of it.

To learn more, check out the event’s media kit here bit.ly/ptw2012_mediakit to learn why Philly Tech Week is so important to the region, and get involved by either organizing an event [bit.ly/organize_ptw2012] or sponsoring the week [bit.ly/sponsor_ptw2012] to connect with the region’s growing community.

Find the story online here, and my section here. Go buy a copy.

I was included for being one of three co-founders of local technology news site Technically Philly and being involved in the development of the city’s startup and hacker communities. I was perhaps most pleased that I have so far survived the Philly.com comments, mostly because I have helped build a small for-profit with three full-time employees.

The automatically-generated plaque that a company offered me by email after this news story ran. Though the $169 price tag was a little more than I thought worth it, I was interested in the process and how the newspaper itself didn't offer this.

While I am certainly proud to be included, I am humbled knowing that there are so many other young Philadelphians making great change. There is no way this list of 10 could do that justice. It’s just a highlight of some of us, and I’m proud to be part of it, but I am more than aware of how many others could have been on this list.

For the record, though, I am only 25, not 27. I should also say that I am certainly nervous about being included because of my relatively small contribution at such a young age. I look forward to being involved in much more in the future.

A PDF of the cover here and the article here.

I should also add that my colleague Sean Blanda was also recently included in a young up-incomers list.

I reported on the funding for Technically Philly. Read her story here.

In the world of radio, there were a few versions, and I don’t have the full version with my audio included, but below hear two of the audio pieces: one from Maiken and my audio clip that was played following the host’s intro.

LISTEN HERE FOR FULL VERSION

LISTEN HERE FOR MY CLIP

A screenshot of a draft of the License to Inspect tool, built by Azavea for PlanPhilly using the new L&I app. Click to enlarge.

A feature story covering the as-yet unreleased Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections API-based online tool ‘License to Inspect,’ its inspiration and hope was published on Technically Philly Monday, a story I reported and wrote during the last couple months.

It is the last major feature of the Transparencity grant project I’ve been leading, and one of the more detailed investigative reports I’ve done in my journalism career. The feature, which details the nearly two-year struggle to go public with a project with internal support, is meant to show the lessons learned and obstacles faced in the hopes that future city agencies can more efficiently release their data publicly for development and citizen use.

Give it a read, for lessons to be taken for any local government. and then find some of what didn’t make it into the piece below.

Below, portions of my reporting and writing that didn’t make it into the final feature:

• Focusing the effort on getting data out the right way was important for a few reasons, Burns, the L&I commissioner, said: (1) transparency, (2) reducing staff work load on freedom of information requests and (3) “We want to show that the Licenses and Inspections Department is an integral part of the community, by being able to show just how much we do with a small staff and (4) how much this department has improved in recent years, battling its reputation.
• Lessons learned: have high-level requirements, spend time on meeting them, but set deadlines and stick to them, develop that sense of urgency as it exists in every private workplace.
• “What Nutter needs to say when people ask about, say, the property tax delinquency problem is, ‘We’re going to fix that by getting all of our records straight and public and transparent,” Cheetham said. “When we do that, we’re going to realize problems we didn’t know we had. No city agencies are cross referenced. BRT data was the best the city had but it can be flawed. The way to make this real is to get this sense that the only way to truly fix problems, like property taxes, is to get all our records publicly shared in a format that can be used, like we’re finally seeing done with L&I.”
• “If this is viewed as successful, this will shine a lot of good light on taking more time to build a services API. In city government, we immediately default to do a data dump, which means we need to find the fields and each project we’ll do a new one. With five new projects, that’s five new data dumps we have to manage. If we can scale off an API, we only have to regularly maintain that one service.”

The story did well in traffic for a boring data story, featuring a few hundred hits in the first few hours and getting spread and discussed on social media, even receiving a Facebook Like from, yes, the Mayor, despite the story's tough talk.

• “Sometimes it might seem like an API is more of a challenge, but even data sets can present problems with maintenance. This was a chance to connect with Open 311 and make things easier for the future,” said Clinton Johnson.
• “But the city shuts down over the Christmas holiday. No changes to the city’s servers or services during any extended break when a lot of core staff are around to avoid any big problem. So for a good chunk of December, nothing can happen, like launching and running an API,” said Cheetham.
• By July and August 2010, Cheetham says, “everyone was asking the right questions still, from database specifications to field details to data accuracy assessments.”
• Burns and Gupta made clear immediately that they didn’t have the capacity on their own to provide a live data feed, “so they were going to release data as a daily text file export that would get emailed, received and processed to be loaded for release to the public by geo-tagging each record and standardizing them all,” he said. “Everyone involved was moving forward with great enthusiasm and support, without any adversarial in-fighting at all.”
• “By September 2010, everything was green lighted. Azavea is building the application, and we’re already planning to roll it out in the next few weeks,” Golas said. “But then we just suddenly felt the sea change at the city level.”
• “Allan [Frank] saw DOT as the natural gatekeeper for the [L&I] project, and it takes time to take something like that over,” says another developer close to a stakeholder.
• “Data has to be accurate because people will be drawing conclusions from it,” Burns said.
• “DOT said they’re into this, we could have something done by end of September. We get a specification draft in October, a word document of ‘this is what it’s going to look like,” said Cheetham. They sent a sample of the API, a single data field, and we just had to ask for more. It was just this incremental change. And then, well, in December, the city locks down changes to its systems right before elections and during major vacation time, particularly for effects to the mainframe. It’s about keeping everything secure and stable when people are away. So we get into December when they finish the next draft, but we have to wait until after the holiday lock down. We talked about January 7 as the date, and we got a data stream as planned around then. They asked for feedback, we gave it, we started using it and building the application around it. We found issues in the data and limitations in fields, including that a number of the fields agreed upon by PlanPhilly and L&I were not in there. They said ‘they weren’t in the spec,’ but they were in the spec, so DOT went back to add to that. So then a new development process starts. They’re going to redevelop this with expanded fields. L&I would check in once a week for the status, and we’d get news that the specification is 50 percent revised, now 75 revised, the application is 10 percent done, now 20 percent done. We got another version of the API in July. We turned around a response in 24 hours saying here are the eight things that are still buggy. They’ve acknowledged those problems and that’s where we are.
• The data appears to be rather accurate, which is always a concern with city records: “we aren’t ground trooping it, but it makes sense and we have faith in it,” says Cheetham, no stranger to data sources. Some batch uploads and a handful of minor inconsistencies exist but “nothing to call this project into question,” he adds.
• “We had more than a few meetings with L&I early on. Those centered on what information do we want in this application and Azavea saying this is how it would work with these data sets, who would be responsible for any liability, what could be done with the data once it was released, all those specifics,” Golas said. “The technology solution was simple early on, getting a daily data dump of all the fields we requested that were entered into the L&I database system, called Hansen.

A variety of strategies and expectations remain, but online media conversations can’t happen in good conscious without at least a glancing mention of business sustainability.

That was my first takeaway from the New Media Unplugged #UncappedLive event held at the historic Sigma Sound Studios in Center City Philadelphia Tuesday night.

On behalf of Technically Philly, I hosted the event with Tayyib Smith of 215mag.com and led the conversation, featuring a half dozen five-minute introductions from niche publishers seated in chairs amongst 40 attendees in the room, decorated wildly by lead sponsor Vitamin Water and featuring free samples of Heineken Light, which didn’t turn out to be half bad.

See below some of what I learned.

Photo lovingly stolen from Eric Smith

SPEAKERS:

• 6-630pm: people arrive and grab their first couple beers. 6:30-7:30pm: our conversation and questions. 7:30-8:30pm: people chat, meet and grab another beer or three.
• Tayyib Smith, who helped organize the entire two weeks of #UncappedLive in his role at Little Giant Media, introduced the event
• I introduced the event’s purpose (getting indie publishers to know each other and sharing best practices) and talked about kicking off Philly Tech Week 2012 plans, a major revenue generator.
• Eric Smith, Geekadelphia co-founder, talked about the site’s role and its recent success with Philly Geek Awards.
• Shannon McDonald, the founder of NEast Philly, talked about developing partnerships and raising awareness in Northeast Philadelphia.
• Adam Schmidt, the founder and president of Drink Philly, introduced his work and spoke of their plans for expansion.
• Jon, the new editor of Naked Philly, shared the site’s unique collaboration between a real estate company and news site for development news.
• David Raible, the executive director of new philanthropy news site Generocity.org, talked about its plans to democratize nonprofit insight previously most often only known to wealthy donors and Generocity’s goals to scale.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Talk business sustainability: Tayyib poked fun at himself for “blowing a half a million dollars” of investment on the (gorgeous) early editions of two.one.five magazine and asked to hear more about revenue plans. I gave my Technically Media spiel, Adam Schmidt talked about advertising and merchandise fueling Drink Philly and Erika Owens from the accomplished Public School Notebook talked about membership and foundation funding. What I thought was equally important was having Eric Smith talk about his preference that Geekadelphia remain a fun, labor of love, something he wrote about in his writeup on the event. The point was that even though Eric doesn’t want to make money, he understands it’s important to have that be a choice, not just an avoidance.
• Print still sells: Jimmy and Bob Smiley, the father and son team behind the Frankford Gazette, marveled that no one had ever approached them about an online ad after four years of work. After just two newsletter-like print issues to accomodate the neighborhood’s digital divide, “we already sold a $40 ad.” That’s not bringing on any full-time reporters, but shows what hasn’t changed for some.
• Print still has relevance: George Miller, the Temple professor behind music mag startup JUMP Philly, talked about nearing profitability by better paying print ads and being easier to be distributed, understood and shared.
• Different voices mean different audiences: Ashley Hahn, who recently joined PlanPhilly to help the built-environment news site launch a shorter-form blog, talked about the need to offer a different style than the site’s existing longform, detailed articles to attract a younger, more engaged audience.

My Technically Media colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I kept running into situations where we needed headshots or team photos.

Even as a startup, for conferences and speaking engagements, we’d send out photos taken by friends or shots that had landed on Facebook and we realized we needed something a bit more formal.

So, as noted last week on our company blog, we worked with Philadelphia Photographer Colin M. Lenton, whom we know from our college newspaper days, at his rental photo studio in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia. We’re really pleased with the results. See the low resolution versions on our company Facebook page here.

(As noted here a couple months ago, we actually had a few fun shots taken by another great Philadelphia photographer, Neal Santos, but that just in preparation for another photo shoot altogether and weren’t formal headshots.)

The first ever Philly Geek Awards show, organized by my friends at Geekadelphia, was held last Friday at the Academy of Natural Sciences. As mentioned here in June, I was proudly involved in three nominations.

My Technically Philly colleagues Sean Blanda, Brian James Kirk and I were honored to have Philly Tech Week named Philadelphia’s Best Local Annual Event. In accepting the award, we were able to thank the entire technology community for getting involved and remind the nearly 400 people in attendance that Philly Tech Week 2012 is coming the last week of next April, in addition to a fine message from Kirk.

Because I so loved the event and because I consider the Geekadelphia crew good buddies, I was awash with thoughts on this year and next. Below, I share some of them.

Thoughts:

• The event was a four-hour blast, from the cocktail reception, to the Academy location, to MC Doogie Horner, to the presenters, awards and the rest.
• The atmosphere was welcoming and supportive. Despite covering the community, I probably only really knew 10 percent of those in attendance because of its draw across communities, but it was a friendly and warm environment.
• This can become an endlessly important annual event for intersecting a lot of creative, innovation and technology communities in a way that we hope for Philly Tech Week. I think the two should become partnering, anchor events. The PACT Alliance, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Pennsylvania Bio, the University City Science Center and other older organizations do work in this way for more established communities of technology but the crossover between young and old has never really happened. Collaborating with the Science Festival probably makes a lot of sense, but the disparate levels of funding — they’re far better financed than Philly Tech Week — makes that difficult.
• We should connect across the Philly Geek Awards and Philly Tech Week, perhaps in a hall of fame or something that could involve nominations, a roast and induction or otherwise be a way to welcome older or other various communities and bridge between the two. To that point, I’d vote for the Geek Awards to happen in the fall, closer to the end of the year so they could be considered representative of the calendar year and be mostly equidistant from Philly Tech Week. Say, late October or early November before the holiday rush?
• Length: An hour to 90 minutes cocktail reception seemed perfect, and the two hour award show with a 15 minute intermission could actually perhaps have been a bit longer, but keeping it trim is a good way to keep people excited.
• Dress: Having a black-tie event was perfect and encouraging some of the more creative types to take that a new way was fun.
• Livestream and chop and share video: This was the plan but there were some hiccups. Still, in this community, everything should be recorded and then quickly chopped up by award and shared for the future.
• Red carpet: The rain killed it, but having a real walk across the red carpet would be a fun addition.
• MC Doogie Horner: The comedian, who recently prompted another post here, had a great five-minute opening monologue and a quick award intro later in the show. I was definitely left wanting more. Having that kind of outside perspective is a really fitting lead. Maybe in the future, you’d pay someone like that to really lead the entire evening.
• Academy of Natural Sciences: I had never been there before and many with whom I spoke said the same, so I think it was very smart for them to welcome us into their location. We were a fitting audience. Having roaming animals — like parrots and iguanas — with staff members talking about their fit was cool.
• Every category needs three or four nominees to keep symmetry.
• Award categories I want to see: Geek Headline of the Year (think Comcast buying NBC, GPIC funded at Navy Yard); Hacker of the Year; Graphic Design of the Year; and I think Startup of the Year is really the biggest award to give so should happen at the end and be the most hyped.
• In Memoriam: The very funny picture montage of community members who had left Philly this year, fitting of Exit Interview, was funny and a great way to celebrate those here. I think that might be something to do again, and perhaps add those who have joined the community.
• Have pre-announced winners: Because I’d think you’d want to add quite a few award categories but not lengthen the show by too much, I think honoring some folks with announced winners beforehand would be fitting.
• Video and Descriptions: Why I think the Philly Geek Awards and Philly Tech Week could and should stand out is the opportunity to bring together otherwise very different groups. What that means then, is that much more context is necessary. I think presenters should offer even a quick 10-second description of each nominee to put it in context with the others and, when possible, all nominees should have some video element, particularly the video nominees. They helped make it more of a show and educate and connect the audience in support of each other.
• The Geekadelphia crew talked about getting a lot of push back from people, something we experienced with Philly Tech Week, so it’s important to remember that a lot of that response truly shows how much ownership an entire community takes over these events. That’s a good thing.
• Geekadelphia has already conceived of the idea of something of an academy to help develop future award categories and nominees.
• Eric Smith of Geekadelphia and we at Technically Philly sat down together back in 2009 and started sketching out the idea of doing an awards show together. It was clear that then, we had different visions and so we set it aside. We at Technically Philly revisited the idea for last Philly Tech Week but again decided it was the right time. It’s exciting that Geekadelphia has moved on this.

News Coverage:

• Daily News feature on event, a sidebar of the winners and another feature on the geek scene, in addition to a preview
• NewsWorks culture preview and a short review
• Metro preview
• Technically Philly
• Eric Smith on why he led the awards show
• PhillyPost from Philadelphia magazine
• The 20 from NBC Philadelphia
• Associated Press via Fox News
• Geekadelphia sponsors

Part of the JLab-funded Enterprise Reporting Fund that paid for the NEast Philly District 172 project I shared recently, Abandoned City was a partnership between Technically Philly, PlanPhilly and CityPaper and Broadband2035 was a partnership between Technically Philly and PlanPhilly.

While I was involved with some strategy, reporting, introductions, planning and, for Broadband2035, I led the relationship with the city’s Planning Commission (more on that below), my colleague Brian James Kirk really led our roles in these two initiatives.

Abandoned City, depicted above was an investigation of vacant property in Philadelphia and its impact on communities.

• CityPaper led the reporting and devoted a cover story and other print space for reporting
• PlanPhilly offered additional reporting, editing and the web platform
• Technically Philly initiated the partnership and worked with a developer to visualize and map those findings.

Broadband2035, which is ongoing, investigated the impact access to affordable broadband has on low-income communities

• PlanPhilly offered reporting, editing and guidance
• Technically Philly led the reporting, worked with the city’s Planning Commission to incorporate broadband plans into its comprehensive Philadelphia2035 vision and hosted the series page.