New Model Army

I started writing my column this month on booze in the newsroom and other lost traditions. In my 21 years in journalism, I’ve witnessed the devolution of media culture from free-wheeling hotbeds of professional tension and excessive living into hushed, corporate cubicle warrens, with reporters and sales folk alike watching their companies’ stock prices as a key indicator of success or failure. I find this development counterproductive, unnecessary and possibly even fatal. Bloggers, gun-for-hire correspondents and foreign news agencies like the BBC and Al-Jazeera have become the new vanguard, and their work constitutes most of the heavy lifting in global coverage. The biggest loss is at the local level, where panicking publishers retire their most experienced newshounds in favor of cheaper, younger labor (or nobody at all), compromising our access to the information that affects us most directly by eliminating the beat reporter with intimate knowledge of the players. Experience has been devalued into obsolescence: a strong statement where exceptions are surely demonstrable, but generally true in my opinion.

As a publisher, I absolutely understand the financial travails of for-profit journalism. I know that lifestyle sells to advertisers better than news coverage and that bills must be paid. I know that print is on the wane and web is on the rise, and that the big challenge is monetization of web opportunity. I also understand that the digital democratization of information is one of the greatest blessings of this modern age, but that as a result, it is increasingly difficult to be the exclusive source for anything.

It’s a conundrum of biblical proportions and it’s threatening to take down the existing structure of the Fourth Estate. The New York Times and Washington Post are two excellent examples of locally-based daily newspapers that successfully serve an enormous national and international audience on the web, yet haven’t built enough web revenue to close the gap on lost print dollars. It’s democratization again; once online, news outlets compete with everyone else on the web for ad dollars and it’s no longer enough to send sales reps to every business and agency in town to exact the formerly customary pound of flesh. Advertisers now have the same limitless choices as media consumers, plus a long-standing bad taste in their mouth from the extortionary tactics previously employed by daily newspapers and the Yellow Pages.

It’s a big mess, that’s for sure. High-quality local news coverage is an absolute must in every community. On the other hand, a long-term soft retail economy and broader competition for ad dollars has local news organizations stuck between a rock and an even harder rock. So, what’s the answer?

I’m just one small publisher and I can’t solve all of the world’s problems – I can barely even keep up with my own stuff. But I have seen a few agile publishers here in Milwaukee do some pretty smart things to connect with their constituencies. The Small Business Times was started in 1995 by a group of Business Journal expatriates discontent with the lack of attention paid to the concerns of small to medium-sized local businesses. They pushed the boulder uphill for years, growing slowly, fighting for every ad dollar and relying, like so many do, on the old model of creating content for the reader and selling that readership in the form of print advertisements.

How did that go for them? I only worked there for a short time, but in my experience it was tight in the way that private small businesses often are, with old computers, shared workspaces and very limited page counts. But they’re smart over there; they figured out that the golden rule of business pertains to publishing, too; instead of insisting that people buy what you’re selling, find out what they’re excited to pay money for and give them that, even if it means changing your structure. Now they run several successful annual conferences and trade shows, push out an e-newsletter with truly useful information and proactively find new ways to connect businesses (their constituency) to other businesses and the community. As a result, they’re growing in both size and influence where others are withering. Shepherd Express founded, initially produced and has its branding fingers all over the Milwaukee International Film Festival, and I bet it’s been good for business. There are other examples, including VITAL, which has taken a broader approach to covering local culture by integrating print stories with web content and hosting (really fun) monthly events to release our issues.We also distribute literature for local arts and community-based groups as well as niche magazines from other publishers like WELL Magazine, Experience Milwaukee, Alcoholmanac, ArtsScene and more.

How does this apply to funding quality news coverage? I’m not suggesting an all-church bake sale to pay for the daily’s religious beat, but I believe large news institutions could take a page from the little guys’ playbook. We all need for local news outlets to succeed, but they have to find their focus and meet their communities half way. The rebels beat the redcoats by challenging the conventions of warfare, and that’s what’s called for here. It’s a big challenge, but there’s no reason why it can’t work. Anyone know how to sew a flag? VS