Tag: Journalism

Here’s what I’d do to ensure local journalism exists 20 years from now

Say the United States needs 50,000 full-time local journalists to maintain our distinct and robust discourse. That’s to have an independent voice to sniff out injustice and to put a mirror up to communities with professional rigor. (Despite our discourse, two-thirds of Americans trust their local media.)

Today there are just 37,000 working journalists in the United States, and falling. More alarmingly, even that number is increasingly made of non-local reporters, based primarily in New York City, Washington D.C. and California.

We may have half, or even fewer, the number of full-time local journalists this country may need for an informed public. (Yes, there may be more American coal miners than local U.S. reporters.)

That 50,000 number comes from a landmark report for the FCC by Steve Waldman, the editor who launched and is now running Report for America aimed at addressing just that issue. Confronting an enormous gap, his nonprofit crucially places reporters in local newsrooms (both nonprofit and for-profit) with identified coverage gaps.

The journalism practitioners among us are maybe too aware of how disrupted is the advertising model that defined our category for a couple hundred years. Frighteningly though, seven in 10 Americans still think their local news media are doing well financially.

Put another way: a central part of U.S. democracy and local civic dialogue has been broken for 20 years, we still haven’t addressed the core problem, and, apparently, the stakeholders we most need to participate (our readers) aren’t even aware of the problem. This essay is meant to outline why my professional work has focused where it has and what I hope that might offer others who care about acts of journalism.

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This Knight Foundation report on Philly media skips us. Here’s why

A friend forwarded me the report first with a question: Where’s Technical.ly?

I’m a genuine fan of the Knight Foundation. It gets its knocks, but it’s one of the few consistent funders of journalistic change in the country. I’ve also spent more than a decade running Technical.ly, one of the few local news organizations that has gone all-in on using journalism to attract earned income—the very approach journalistic funders always talk about prioritizing. And I’ve been doing it from Philadelphia.

So when Knight published a report this month specifically highlighting bright spots in Philadelphia media, it felt a little strange to be overlooked entirely. [Report PDF]

To be clear, I understand why we’re not in there. Technical.ly looks different from most of the players in local journalism, even the smaller outlets cited in the report for their “ecosystem approach.” It even cites “nonprofit news” as its focus, which is mostly a way to discount TV stations. But for me, that’s exactly the point.

Years into this work, I keep encountering a pattern: Established leaders say they want more of a certain kind of innovation—let’s call it “XYZ”—but by their own definitions, anyone doing XYZ (serving a niche market to pursue independent sustainability) is dismissed as not “journalistic” enough to be part of the conversation. It’s a perfect recipe to ensure we never actually address the core problem these reports are meant to solve.

I do believe most large regions in the country will eventually end up with a philanthropically funded local news organization. In Philadelphia, thanks to Gerry Lenfest, that may well be the Inquirer. And other public-interest nonprofit news outlets will find their place too.

But I’ve bet my career on the idea that local news ecosystems need more than just legacy and nonprofit institutions. They need ethnic media, neighborhood weeklies, subject-matter-focused outlets like Technical.ly, and even individuals empowered by social platforms and new tech tools. (I like lessons from B2B publishing, though it’s different locally).

We’re not competing with the legacy players. We’re complementing them, filling gaps and addressing needs they can’t meet alone. I just hope more people in positions of influence and funding will recognize that role—and include it in conversations about the future of local journalism.

What the Committee of Seventy should teach other nonprofits about publishing

The Committee of Seventy is a 110-year-old local good government activist group known best in Philadelphia for its oversight of city elections. With the retirement of their popular newsman-turned-leader, the nonpartisan nonprofit is seeking a new Executive Director. This is also a unique opportunity for the group to update how it can best serve its mission to combat corruption. It has a clear alignment with public affairs journalism — something other mission groups should learn from.

For my undergraduate academic year 2004-2005, I was a policy intern at Seventy, spanning outgoing director Zack Stalberg and his predecessor Fred Voigt, whom I also interviewed for a college thesis project. From then through to my Election Day volunteering, I’ve long been inspired by their work.

But like Stalberg was meant to do when he replaced Voigt, Seventy is again in need of an updated look at how it can best accomplish their goals. If I were to launch an organization with the goals Seventy has today, in an era with newfound opportunities to build civic-orientated coalitions, web publishing for audience building would certainly be part of the strategy.

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The difference between a beat reporter and a features writer

Producing acts of journalism to inform a community can get done with different approaches. There are those who follow one community closely and those who offer the broader narrative to a wider audience.

In news parlance, it’s the beat reporter and the features writer, and it’s tied to the idea of choosing deeper impact or larger scale. I’ve developed a better understanding of the differences in these specialties over the last few years, in both hiring, following and familiarizing myself with the work of my peers.

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Journalism isn’t what we should try to save: Philly example

A couple times a year, someone in Philadelphia technology will say to me, what that community really needs to broaden its prominence is “its own Tech Crunch,” a reference to the established and influential tech business blog with Silicon Valley roots. The implication is, with all due respect to the maturity of Technical.ly Philly (relative to our newer, smaller markets) and its readership and regular events, that Philadelphia needs a megaphone to a global audience of investors and talent.

When someone says this, I hide my cringe and instead I politely nod, before changing the subject.

Of course, a statement like that shows a profound lack of understanding of audience, goals and impact in online media. Tech Crunch is established and influential because it covers big, well-funded tech business nationally, not a fledgling community in a non-traditional hub. Technical.ly Philly looks the way it does because of where it is. It doesn’t have national readership because it isn’t national in focus. The people who say “we need a Tech Crunch,” are confusing outcomes and solutions (Silicon Valley was the global tech leader first, then it spawned Tech Crunch, not the other way around).

Put another way: Media is a Mirror. This is a problem that happens elsewhere.

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Journalism DNA: Is Technical.ly a journalism outlet?

Acts of journalism are challenging and at times infrequent things for local news organizations. Pushing a community and seeking to find outcomes through difficult questions is the best of what media can do. Balancing that with the work tied to creating a sustainable news venture is a consuming one. Here’s where I am in my thinking about that process.

When we launched in 2009 what has since become Technical.ly, we always prepared for a content mixture that would include information and community journalism. We were trained in a newspaper worldview that put a type of ethical paradigm and professional standards that we embraced, even as we challenged its traditions.

Along the way, I found out that I want to build something that could have an impact. Pessimists are nothing but spectators and reporters are almost always pessimists.

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How many ‘civic-minded’ residents do you really have?

If journalism is going to evolve to a savvier appreciation for ‘impact,’ its makers need to have a clearer idea of their target audience.

Like you would for any business, you need to know how big your market is, and you need to understand how hard (and necessary) it is to create that audience by acquiring new users — in this case, civic-minded residents.

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A note of thanks to all the editors of the world

For much of the 20th century, the newspaper industry had this curious role filled by “rewrite men” — though, of course, women, too, served these positions. For breaking on-the-scene news, when telegraphs and then faxes couldn’t do the trick, a reporter would get on the phone with a rewrite man and assemble a story live, using notes and standard formatting.

The reporter would speak his story — an impressive feat, actually, having heard a few veterans do this and often trying it to keep up the old tradition — and the rewrite man would record it, transcribe it, clean it up and run it. If you talk to a newspaper reporter of a certain age, she might have stories about the good rewrite men and bad rewrite men. The good ones would take your rough story and turn it into a gem (with the help of other editors too). A rewrite man might go years without ever seeing his byline in a newspaper, never getting any official acknowledgement of his work to put out a finished piece of copy.

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Open city data in Philadelphia: the obstacles and triumphs of the L&I example

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.

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District 172: John Perzel coverage for NEast Philly, funded by JLab

 

Though I took part in three of 14 JLab-funded Philadelphia Enterprise Reporting Fund projects, first announced here last fall, I led one of them.

For Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, I helped lead the editorial direction of a project called District 172: the politics of change after state Rep. John Perzel.

Following the indicted former state Speaker of the House, whose corruption trial has been postponed until the fall, we covered what the impact the loss of a 30-year state leader would be on his district, particularly a small swath that had served as his political base.

 

Find all the coverage here.

I had the following roles: