Save The News: Denver - Discussion Summary

The SaveTheNews.org Denver forum included 14 table discussions on varying journalism topics. We are collecting notes and reflections from those conversations and posting them below. Use the links to skip ahead to a particular topic.

• New Commercial Models: How should we pay for news? - Steve Outing
• From Denver to DC: Media Policy and Journalism - Chance Williams
• After the Rocky: Lessons from the Experiments So Far - Steve Foster
• What Does Internet Policy Have to Do with the Future of News - Jenny Flanagan
• Form Follows Function: Alternative Funding Models for News - Lark Corbeil
• Jobs and Journalism: Labor and the Future of News - Tracy Simmons
• The Future Journalism and Newsroom Diversity - Ledy Garcia-Ecksteain and Polly Baca
• Participatory Journalism: Of the People, For the People - Tony Shawcross, Denver Open Media & Adrienne Russell, University of Denver

New Commercial Models: How should we pay for news? - Steve Outing

I was assigned as the facilitator of the “Commercial News Models: Where will we get our news?” table, and interest in that topic outnumbered the chairs available. Our standing-room-only group was animated and opinionated, and not of one mind when it came to solutions. And even though the journalists around the table outnumbered the non-journalists, the community members, I think, gave we journalists some hope that the issue of sustainability of public-interest news reporting is beginning to resonate outside of the media cognoscenti and news-industry working stiffs.

As you might expect given the table’s media-geeky topic of news business models, it was the current, laid-off, and retired journalists and publishers who had the strongest opinions about how to save journalism. I’d say that most of them recognized that resurrecting printed newspapers to their former glory was a lost cause, and that adapting to the digital environment and an audience increasingly comfortable with digital media consumption was the difficult task at hand.

Read the rest of Steve’s report here: http://www.savethenews.org/blog/09/09/23/report-denver-forum-future-news

From Denver to DC: Media Policy and Journalism - Chance Williams

I am a native of Denver, Colorado, and I grew up reading the Rocky Mountain News. I also happened to be in town when the Rocky published its final issue in February of 2009. When a city loses an institution that they’ve come to depend on like the Rocky, a period of confusion follows. It seemed everyone was trying to figure out how we let something so precious slip through our fingers.

Given this history, I was happy to return to my hometown on September 15th to examine these questions and many others at Saving the News: Denver and the Future of Journalism, an event hosted by Free Press. I was encouraged to see that even many months after the Rocky’s demise, there was still enough interest and concern to pack the room. My role was to facilitate a small group discussion on media policy and journalism, and the energy was palpable as my group grappled with the role of policy in the world of journalism.

The group of people at my table consisted of current and former journalists, media studies students from the University of Colorado, and concerned citizens. All were worried not just about the future of journalism, but also about the impact that its collapse would have on our democracy. My group weighed policy solutions and thoughtfully struggled together to see what their impact would be.

For many it seemed that the Internet was either the problem or the solution to the future of journalism. Some blamed bloggers for crippling journalism or craigslist for taking away its revenue stream, others said the Internet made newsprint irrelevant. These are all understandable reactions, but I don’t think this zero sum approach does justice to the problem at hand. I took the time to remind everyone that unsustainable corporate business models played a large role in the Rocky’s demise, and that we can’t view the Internet as a panacea until we can guarantee universal access for all.

When the time came to close our discussion, I sensed that we were at the beginning of a conversation. I noticed many of the small groups making plans to meet again in the future to continue to discuss these problems. The sadness of losing my hometown paper lifted as I saw a strong community forming that was ready to protect something precious to all of us.

After the Rocky: Lessons from the Experiments So Far - Steve Foster

Our discussion went well. We mostly relived some of our experiences from the past few months of our involvement with I Want My Rocky, INDenverTimes and Rocky Mountain Independent. We discussed how the quantity of content is as important as the quality, and how that relates to the lackluster traffic of our latest venture. Our experience with INDenverTimes was positive from a traffic standpoint because we heavily aggregated content and generally posted 40-50 new headlines on the web site every day. As a result, the traffic was good but the editorial direction of the site was haphazard at best. Our gamble with RMI was that by focusing on fewer but better stories we could attract more readers to fewer stories, a gamble that has not paid off.

We talked, too, about how much easier it is to see the importance of social media like Facebook and Twitter both as a marketing tool and a news delivery tool when working as a startup rather than part of a traditional newsroom. Our experience using Twitter and Facebook while at the Rocky Mountain News was similar to many of our co-workers in that we knew the words, we knew the applications, what they did and how to use them. But we didn't really understand the power to connect to readers until we needed to connect with readers to let them know we even existed. Because newspapers generally don't need to let the public know they exist, the efforts to reach by staff to reach out for other reasons and create social networks within newspaper readership aren't as successful as they could be.

What Does Internet Policy Have to Do with the Future of News - Jenny Flanagan

The Internet has been an engine of innovation in journalism, and the future of journalism is bound up with the future of the internet. Thus key policy questions like who will control content and access to the web are issues that journalists must be aware of and need to consider.

The conversation in this group surrounded two key aspects of internet policy and how it relates to journalism: Content and Infrastructure. On the content side, the group discussed issues like Net Neutrality and the possibility of discrimination online, in which gatekeepers could privilege certain websites/information over other sites creating a two tiered Internet that only benefits those who can pay big bucks. Obviously this would lead to the same big media companies dominating journalism online, that currently dominate news in print and broadcast. Other people wondered about copyright law online and how the internet is changing people’s legal and illegal access to content. Some advocated to strengthening copyright laws to stop links and excerpts, while others argued that we need to create more access not less.

The issue of access led to conversation about infrastructure. The group seemed to agree that we need to expand access to the internet as more and more vital news moves online. Public policy could help with this. Most people felt that this should be a key priority, as it is content neutral and benefits all journalists and citizens. Other people brought up issues of how independent and noncommercial media needed access to better digital tools to fully take advantage of the internet in communities.

Form Follows Function: Alternative Funding Models for News - Lark Corbeil

Lark Corbeil Founder/CEO of Public News Service (PNS) facilitated a roundtable discussion on alternative funding models and the news. Over the last several decades, emergent hybrid models have gained significant experience to offer in addressing questions of sustainability and healthy growth. Different opinions exist as to whether the L3C (Low profit Limited Liability Corporation) is a cavalry leader or simply a replacement for today's 501(c)3 plus S-corp combo, or whether the straight non-profit model offers the vibrancy needed for long-term success. A snapshot of the combined wisdom of the table condensed around 2 needs: financial diversification or the multi-legged stool including membership/subscription, ads, grants & gifts, and "value added" journalistic services; and basic market research because finding out exactly what people will pay for by trial-and-error is going to be cost-prohibitive for most content providers. All funders apply within.

PNS reaches an estimated weekly audience of 17 million people over 8,000 media outlets across radio, television, web and print through an independent network of state-based news services that cover the public interest beat. It's currently funded by 2 of the 4 legs mentioned above with prosthetics in development.

Jobs and Journalism: Labor and the Future of News - Tracy Simmons

A group composed of photo-journalism students, newspaper readers, journalists looking for job leads, a J-school instructor, a free-lance photographer and an employee of the local newspaper union gathered at table 13 to discuss 'Jobs and Journalism: Labor and the Future of the News'.

Central to the conversation was the theme that professional journalists bring a skill set to the work of recording news that is generally misunderstood and under-recognized. Everyone agreed that the contributions professionally trained journalists bring to the news equation are tremendous and vital to the health of the democracy. There was agreement, too, that news is a commodity and those who produce the commodity should be paid adequately for their work. However, no current revenue model appears to hold the answer to the question how we pay for and preserve journalism jobs. The old models of revenue from circulation and advertising seem to work no longer but the absolute need for professional journalists has not diminished.

Technology and its ability not just to speed up the rate of information transmittal but also its tendency to reduce news to a very few words, gave rise to the distinction between a story and information. The information might be "Michael Jackson is dead" but the story, for those who are interested, goes far beyond that. There was a discussion about what people need to know, for example what City Council is doing, versus what they want, for example the information that Michael Jackson is dead. Implicit in that conversation was the question of how to make sure what people need to know is being written and not being pushed aside for what people want.

In the end, there was a sense that journalism is not going to go away and there is a future for both news and jobs in journalism.

The Future Journalism and Newsroom Diversity - Ledy Garcia-Ecksteain and Polly Baca

The discuss around newsroom diversity consider a number of important questions including: With diminishing resources how do we ensure that there will continue to be diversity in the newsroom? Will significant coverage of communities of color be relegated to small ethnic newspapers? How will the larger community see these stories if they aren’t part of the mainstream media?

In thinking about all the tumult going on in news right now, the members of the table wondered what would happen when the dust settles. In general, most people hoped that some form of print product remained, not out of a sense of nostalgia, but rather a commitment to the diverse ways people access information. If all information moves online our goal must shift to ensuring that every community has adequate access.

There was a good deal of discussion about how Spanish language residents access information with so few Spanish language newspapers and how the radio and Spanish language TV stations seem to have filled part of that void.

The table featured a number of journalism students who were worried about the future of totally committed to the ideals of journalism and to finding ways to use all the tools at their disposal to elevate and tell stories about their communities.

Participatory Journalism: Of the People, For the People - Tony Shawcross, Denver Open Media & Adrienne Russell, University of Denver

We began with introductions and then Tony described the work of Deproduction's Open Media Project and how the tools they've developed are shifting the control of the station to the community and in doing so both saving time and creating a more horizontal and democratic organizational structure. We then posed the question of how elements of this model might translate into other organizations and media genres (like news).

There was some discussion of the issues of accuracy (how important is it, who has the responsibility to gauge it and so on). One table participant spoke of what she perceived to the be the "dangers" of common citizens producing news. We discussed what these dangers might be. They were all centered on thing related to accuracy and objectivity. It was pointed out by some at the table that objectivity is a myth.

The conversation then sort of switched talking about the limits and problems of commercial mainstream media and there were was a lot of anxiety expressed about the contraction of media institutions (ie the monopoly of a few corporations over most of the market), the Pentagon's control over information, the fact that following the norms of professional journalism don't necessarily ensure that the "whole" story is told.

There was tension around the discussion that on the one hand on the lack of norms and practices in place for non-institutionalized journalists and on the other hand the shortcomings of the commercial mass media. "The beauty and the conundrum is that everything is out there on the web."

We then raised the questions of the possibility of new genres of news once everyday people enter into the equation. How the professional model and citizen model might come together? How technology might facilitate a sort of crowd-sourcing of fact-checking?

Or the other way around (as is practiced at many news organizations including the BBC) the citizens contribute info and the pros sort through and verify its importance and its accuracy.

Since we were not going to come to any collectively we asked people to throw out their ideas about actions could be taken to move forward integrating and strengthening participatory media into the larger media landscape. Here's what people said:

"Look at KBDI. Tell people what is going on. Their hearts can feel the truth." "News outlets should have transparency about their standards." "There should be more coverage of how stories are covered." "Stories should be labeled according to recognizable genres so people know if they are reading opinion, strait news etc." "We need a situation where journalism is publicly funded without government or corporate over site, where a rotating committee distributed funds.”