Anyone else out there enjoying ABC23's (KERO) coverage of Kern County lately? I love it when Julie Flannery reports about Tehachapi in front of what looks like a poster or mural of mountains. And the Web site makes it easy to click on a map and get that area's local news.
What a great idea. No other Bakersfield news source now cares as much about outlying communities than KERO seems to. I was sucked into Delano week – and was thoroughly entertained as Rusty Shoop reported the weather to the tune of Delano High School's band while holding an umbrella in the rain. I also dug Taft week, and one particular story of an old-timer remembering the days of the oil gushers.
This seems pretty novel to me that a local TV station is taking advantage of niche reporting. And what a great revenue model! Every advertisement during the broadcast is for a local business of that town. Now I want to drive to Delano just to try 3 D's Grill, featuring Filipino and Japanese cuisine.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Dream jobs for journalists
We've all heard about the British dude who landed the sweet gig getting paid $111,000 to live in a private villa on an island off the coast of Australia, snorkel, relax and write a blog about the experience.
Since the rest of us missed the boat on that one, would we settle for a mere $60,000 to live in a guest house on a vineyard, drink wine, play football with the winery's owners and blog about that experience?
The folks at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County are looking for someone “who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live.”
Um, I know how to do all that stuff! And I drink wine! And I love Sonoma County! And I know how to make a YouTube video, which is the only way they accept applications for this job!
Oh, but drats. I have a family, a 6-month-old son, a house, a dog and a cat to take care of. I can't just run away to wine country for six months.
So I relinquish this job opportunity to the rest of you unemployed journalists out there. The application is due June 5. Go forth and make your fame and fortune. And send me a case of wine.
Since the rest of us missed the boat on that one, would we settle for a mere $60,000 to live in a guest house on a vineyard, drink wine, play football with the winery's owners and blog about that experience?
The folks at Murphy-Goode Winery in Sonoma County are looking for someone “who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live.”
Um, I know how to do all that stuff! And I drink wine! And I love Sonoma County! And I know how to make a YouTube video, which is the only way they accept applications for this job!
Oh, but drats. I have a family, a 6-month-old son, a house, a dog and a cat to take care of. I can't just run away to wine country for six months.
So I relinquish this job opportunity to the rest of you unemployed journalists out there. The application is due June 5. Go forth and make your fame and fortune. And send me a case of wine.
Face Bakersfield shutting down?
Since my last blog about Nick Belardes' community news Web site, FaceBakersfield.com, he's faced some tough issues. First, Bakersfield's D-league basketball team, the Jam, folded due to it losing too much money. The team seemed to be one of Nick's major advertisers. When I asked him what he was going to do, he answered that he'd continue moving forward with the site.
But now, about a month after the site was down previously due to a hack job, the site has been deemed a security threat. When I tried to open the site today, my Firefox browser posted this warning: “Reported Hack Site! This web site at facebakersfield.com has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.”
Here are a couple of Nick's Twitter posts (nlbelardes) about it:
-- “FACE NEWS DOWN "AGAIN": I have taken site down again until this "flagging of site as harmful" message disappears in browsers.”
-- “It might be time to find a new content management system or new template that doesn't have so many security holes. Wordpress, blah.”
-- “I love writing the news, but the Face News site is a headache. Maybe it's time to go back to a blog.”
I asked Nick what he's going to do now? He wrote that he just ate ice cream. His site may be down, but he's not.
He wrote: “Lots of great things going on. I have a book coming out and a possible 2 more book deals. Why would I be down?”
But now, about a month after the site was down previously due to a hack job, the site has been deemed a security threat. When I tried to open the site today, my Firefox browser posted this warning: “Reported Hack Site! This web site at facebakersfield.com has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.”
Here are a couple of Nick's Twitter posts (nlbelardes) about it:
-- “FACE NEWS DOWN "AGAIN": I have taken site down again until this "flagging of site as harmful" message disappears in browsers.”
-- “It might be time to find a new content management system or new template that doesn't have so many security holes. Wordpress, blah.”
-- “I love writing the news, but the Face News site is a headache. Maybe it's time to go back to a blog.”
I asked Nick what he's going to do now? He wrote that he just ate ice cream. His site may be down, but he's not.
He wrote: “Lots of great things going on. I have a book coming out and a possible 2 more book deals. Why would I be down?”
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Facing the future of local news
As the Internet continues to erode newspaper readership, clearly the reinvention of journalism will take place on the Web.
However, mainstream media failed during the past 15 years to lead that reinvention because it refused to give up its old advertising business models, and missed the boat on monetizing its content. Other than a few elite publications such as the Wall Street Journal, there is no industry model to charge readers online. And, frankly, the Internet should be a free and open marketplace of ideas. It's impossible to charge for information that could easily be copied and re-posted elsewhere, or – gasp – charge sites to link to the information. That would be like someone telling me a joke, then making me pay them to turn around and re-tell it to someone else. Not gonna happen, folks. (Folks = Dean Singleton and the Associated Press.)
As newspapers fold or severely cut back their newsrooms and original content, large voids of information are going to emerge. Most noticeably, the gaps will be at the hyper-local level. Bare-bones staffs can barely get the paper out, let alone cover all of the news important to the community. And even with citizen journalism, a small staff doesn't have the time to sift through and edit submissions. The editor who took over contributions when I was laid off from The Bakersfield Californian told me the other night that she doesn't even have time to approve online submissions, she's so busy assigning and editing citizen journalism pieces on topics she wants to get into the paper. But approving submissions is as easy as clicking the “post” button in the content management system. The key here is she's so focused on filling the newspaper, she doesn't have time to build community online.
But, the future of local news is online. It's sad to see a once forward-thinking newspaper like The Bakersfield Californian still grasping onto the print product and pulling back on serving its future audience. The void exists for online local news. So if the newspaper isn't going to fill it, who is?
Right now, a fiction writer-turned-journalist, Nick Belardes, is building what very well could be the future of local news in Bakersfield. He launched his Web site, Facebakersfield.com, in November 2008 for less than $100 using the free blogging content management system WordPress and a clean, easy-to-read design. His site focuses on breaking news, sports and nonfiction, and uses content from local bloggers as well as Nick himself covering sporting events and rehashing press releases.
Some local journalists will say that Nick's site is not journalism because his narrative style doesn't just stick to the facts. But I say to them, what is journalism? If you are sharing news and information, are you being a journalist? If your answer is yes, then Nick is a journalist. The tagline on his site is: “Face News: An independent Bakersfield news source.” Local media companies, this is your competition.
Nick and I recently tried to meet for coffee to chat about his site, but logistically it was easier to e-mail him my questions. I also prefer a Q&A format so I don't mince his words. If you're curious about Bakersfield's own one-man-band, read on.
Why did you start Face Bakersfield?
For one, I saw an opportunity to serve the community and I saw a need in the community.
I also write a lot, and have a need to write daily. Using my writing as a means to serve others is important.
I also saw Face News as playing a special role in a long-term plan that revolves around the literary arts. That’s why Face News embeds nonfiction from some of the great writers I know. People like James Michael Blaine from the Deep South and Erika Rae from Colorado have unique voices. Jessica Anya Blau’s novel “The Summer of Naked Swim Parties” was picked as a must read by the “Today Show” as well as receiving other accolades. These are just some of the talented people springing up through our nonfiction section. It’s meant to inspire writers in Bakersfield, to up local creative writing standards, and to jumpstart writing souls so people will say, “I can do that!” or “I can write better that those Irresponsibles” and then do it. (Irresponsibles is the name for the nonfiction writers on Face News.)
After I left ABC23 I quickly decided to start experimenting with generating news on my own in an advanced mode that would surpass the blogging I once did. I tried a partnership with GateHouse Media. But they weren’t offering me anything I couldn’t do on my own. Their Web site was a Drupal template that readers weren’t enjoying. And neither was I. They also had a vastly different philosophy than myself. Once it came down to a contract I refused to sign. Face News was born out of a walk I took around the block where I live. I liked the concept.
When I started Face News, I almost instantly started generating income on the site and behind the scenes with people in the community who wanted to see it happen. That didn’t happen with the GateHouse Media site. They thought a site had to reach a certain population threshold in readers and users before ad revenue could be generated. That’s archaic thinking.
What did you do for ABC23 and how did the experience there help you with Face Bakersfield?
I was their website managing editor. I did the same thing I do now: post all the stories, edit, rewrite press releases, write original articles, promote, manage blogs, create videos, etc. I did a lot more there than I was supposed to, but then many topics would have been ignored if I hadn't. One time I voiced my opinion very strongly on a story the news director wasn't interested in. By the end of the night that story made The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I also appeared on TV twice each day to talk about the Web. How could the experience not help me? There would be more of a learning curve if I never had that job.
What are all of your roles? How do you break up your day?
I appointed myself as managing editor because my duties are similar to those I had at KERO (ABC23). I manage the site’s content flow and write articles. I take photos and upload photo essays. I take some video, though not as much as when I was at ABC23. I manage other people’s projects within the site as well: nonfiction and advice mostly.
I also take part in any meetings with potential clients and sponsors.
Each day’s journey depends on content. What news does the day have to offer? Is there breaking news? Will I have an original story or just press releases to work with? Will I cover a sporting event? Do I have my own personal writing projects to attend to? I don’t always worry about news right away in the morning because the world just wants news. They’ll read it when its there.
I try to spend time on novels and on my Twitter novel, “Small Places,” each day. The Twitter novel is really important because it keeps generating a buzz on its own as the first original literary novel on Twitter. It’s been featured in the Christian Science Monitor, was the cover story for the North Bay Bohemian, has been mentioned on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and recently had a great mention on Mashable.com. You can even find a link on Face News. Getting personal press is a great way to promote the site!
I look at my world, in which Face News is a part, as a flow of many writings, people, ideas, projects. It’s all part of this synthesis of writing I do.
What are your key content areas?
News and Sports are key. But the site would be nothing in my opinion without Nonfiction. That’s my favorite section! Still experimenting with the LA to Fresno section. I’m letting it stagnate a little as I decide what to try next. I’m always experimenting with different ideas. People like the Advice a lot too. It’s fun.
What percent of the content comes from you? What percent from the community? What do others contribute? How many contributors do you have?
I’m not going to worry about percentages. Most of the content comes from me. Most of the contributors write for the Nonfiction section. I also have an Advice columnist. Most contributors come and go except for my nonfiction team and advice. They’re loyal. I like that: people with a shared vision.
How do you describe your voice on the site?
Depends on what I’m writing. Some is straight up news. Some is conversational. Some is literary. Comments are in a different tone, too.
How do you decide what you'll cover yourself vs. use a press release for? How do you gauge public interest in a topic?
I like to cover sports myself when I can, and certain hard news stories. Just depends on how I feel information flow is on a topic and what kind of buzz I think a story might create. There's always public interest in every story, otherwise I wouldn't run a news site. Sometimes a story is important simply because it would serve the community to know. Sometimes I write stories that discuss what the other local media are saying. This helps provide the community with a wider perspective on a topic. Media frowns on that. But I don't care about media negativity. I care about readers. I've heard derogatory remarks from media, but so what? I've heard KTLA quote the LA Times lots of times. Nothing wrong with quoting the local media outlets. Nothing wrong with original news, and nothing wrong with press releases that are rewritten. It's all part of the content supply.
I'm surprised that your site covers sports when local media covers it so heavily. How does your site's coverage differ to fill an unmet need in the community? (Answer has been edited for length.)
I'm surprised that you're surprised. There's a huge void in Bakersfield in online and print sports coverage. Most sports stories are only put on the web by one company: Bakersfield.com. ABC23 stepped up their game but I was a big part of why they did it. I pushed for it. Who else puts pics on the Web of sports besides Bakersfield.com? Face News does. And per event, we add more photos than any other media outlet. Who else has a Flickr account? High quality photos too. Who else puts video clips of sports on YouTube? Maybe Bakersfield.com. But not the TV stations.
We're also the only local entity who Twitters from sporting events. The Jam, The Condors and now Blaze games have seen "Twitter Highlights of the Game" in sports articles. The Blaze, who are affiliated with the Texas Rangers, have no TV and no radio coverage this year. But I twitter real-time scores and commentary throughout the game. That's innovation right here in Bakersfield. Myself and Jesse Rivera (I have a different person assist on Twitter in each professional sports we cover) sent out Flickr pics, Twitpics and tweets all last Thursday night as the Blaze won their first home game of the season.
Sports has a void in Bakersfield and we're out to fill part of it any way we can. There's a lot of kinds of sports articles that are also waiting to be written. And if I had more time for video and better equipment, we would do more video.
How popular is your site? What are your page views? How many comments? (Answer has been edited for length.)
Face News hasn’t been around long enough to gauge popularity. My goal isn’t to win a popularity contest anyway. Lots of TV, newspaper and radio people read the site. People in Fresno read it, including folks in their media. Face News has been displayed on the home page of the Bakersfield Condors and the homepage of the entire NBA D league. We’ve been mentioned on two radio stations locally, in the Fresno Bee blogs, Bakersfield.com staff blogs, literary blogs and on television news. On Twitter, lots of folks have helped create a buzz from U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy to mommy bloggers like @bakomom. News is news. If it’s engaging, it gets around.
I’d say that’s pretty good as we don’t spend money on marketing and have yet to launch a grassroots campaign locally.
Page views? That’s archaic thinking. Who cares? I run a news site that caters to the community and builds relationships. I don’t ever worry about traffic, though I am aware traffic is down for now because we were down for a week and a half from a hacker attack.
Having worked at a TV station I saw how page views are puffed up for sales purposes. I could go on in great detail about how EVERY news site attempts to puff numbers. Look, though we took a hit recently, we were up to page two under the Google term, “Bakersfield News.” And we’ll get back there and maybe move higher. Sometimes our articles rank higher than local news sites. We compete just because there are few sites that write news content. We compete because we serve the community in a unique manner. I am confident the site is moving up in the world, otherwise so many people wouldn’t care about Face News.
How do you market your site?
Through online social networking tools, personal networking, business networking and partnerships, speaking engagements, and the uncanny ability to create a buzz.
What are your ad rates?
Interested parties can contact me if interested.
Who are your main advertisers?
One of the entities I can talk about is the Bakersfield Jam. Their organization is comprised of people who have a strong sense of community. Imagine if people stepped up who believed as much in baseball or football as the Jam’s investors do about their cause? We’re glad that we fit into their vision of community.
What was the source of your start-up funding?
Private. Yet what’s interesting to note is that as far as the technology goes, Face News was started for less than $100.
What do you see for the future of your site? What are your goals?
Our basic goals are simple: to grow and continue to serve the community. The future of our site depends on whether we and the community continue to share a vision. Will they continue to value Face News? Yesterday the CEO of the Bakersfield Californian left two comment on the site. That says something.
The future of Face News also depends on new partnerships in and outside of Bakersfield. And we’re working on that.
You mentioned a future goal is to become a nonprofit. Why do you want to be a nonprofit and why did you start out as a for-profit venture?
We were already set up as a for-profit company under the Noveltown umbrella. Non-profit has an upside in the area of funding that could possibly enrich the news we do. We're looking into it.
However, mainstream media failed during the past 15 years to lead that reinvention because it refused to give up its old advertising business models, and missed the boat on monetizing its content. Other than a few elite publications such as the Wall Street Journal, there is no industry model to charge readers online. And, frankly, the Internet should be a free and open marketplace of ideas. It's impossible to charge for information that could easily be copied and re-posted elsewhere, or – gasp – charge sites to link to the information. That would be like someone telling me a joke, then making me pay them to turn around and re-tell it to someone else. Not gonna happen, folks. (Folks = Dean Singleton and the Associated Press.)
As newspapers fold or severely cut back their newsrooms and original content, large voids of information are going to emerge. Most noticeably, the gaps will be at the hyper-local level. Bare-bones staffs can barely get the paper out, let alone cover all of the news important to the community. And even with citizen journalism, a small staff doesn't have the time to sift through and edit submissions. The editor who took over contributions when I was laid off from The Bakersfield Californian told me the other night that she doesn't even have time to approve online submissions, she's so busy assigning and editing citizen journalism pieces on topics she wants to get into the paper. But approving submissions is as easy as clicking the “post” button in the content management system. The key here is she's so focused on filling the newspaper, she doesn't have time to build community online.
But, the future of local news is online. It's sad to see a once forward-thinking newspaper like The Bakersfield Californian still grasping onto the print product and pulling back on serving its future audience. The void exists for online local news. So if the newspaper isn't going to fill it, who is?
Right now, a fiction writer-turned-journalist, Nick Belardes, is building what very well could be the future of local news in Bakersfield. He launched his Web site, Facebakersfield.com, in November 2008 for less than $100 using the free blogging content management system WordPress and a clean, easy-to-read design. His site focuses on breaking news, sports and nonfiction, and uses content from local bloggers as well as Nick himself covering sporting events and rehashing press releases.
Some local journalists will say that Nick's site is not journalism because his narrative style doesn't just stick to the facts. But I say to them, what is journalism? If you are sharing news and information, are you being a journalist? If your answer is yes, then Nick is a journalist. The tagline on his site is: “Face News: An independent Bakersfield news source.” Local media companies, this is your competition.
Nick and I recently tried to meet for coffee to chat about his site, but logistically it was easier to e-mail him my questions. I also prefer a Q&A format so I don't mince his words. If you're curious about Bakersfield's own one-man-band, read on.
Why did you start Face Bakersfield?
For one, I saw an opportunity to serve the community and I saw a need in the community.
I also write a lot, and have a need to write daily. Using my writing as a means to serve others is important.
I also saw Face News as playing a special role in a long-term plan that revolves around the literary arts. That’s why Face News embeds nonfiction from some of the great writers I know. People like James Michael Blaine from the Deep South and Erika Rae from Colorado have unique voices. Jessica Anya Blau’s novel “The Summer of Naked Swim Parties” was picked as a must read by the “Today Show” as well as receiving other accolades. These are just some of the talented people springing up through our nonfiction section. It’s meant to inspire writers in Bakersfield, to up local creative writing standards, and to jumpstart writing souls so people will say, “I can do that!” or “I can write better that those Irresponsibles” and then do it. (Irresponsibles is the name for the nonfiction writers on Face News.)
After I left ABC23 I quickly decided to start experimenting with generating news on my own in an advanced mode that would surpass the blogging I once did. I tried a partnership with GateHouse Media. But they weren’t offering me anything I couldn’t do on my own. Their Web site was a Drupal template that readers weren’t enjoying. And neither was I. They also had a vastly different philosophy than myself. Once it came down to a contract I refused to sign. Face News was born out of a walk I took around the block where I live. I liked the concept.
When I started Face News, I almost instantly started generating income on the site and behind the scenes with people in the community who wanted to see it happen. That didn’t happen with the GateHouse Media site. They thought a site had to reach a certain population threshold in readers and users before ad revenue could be generated. That’s archaic thinking.
What did you do for ABC23 and how did the experience there help you with Face Bakersfield?
I was their website managing editor. I did the same thing I do now: post all the stories, edit, rewrite press releases, write original articles, promote, manage blogs, create videos, etc. I did a lot more there than I was supposed to, but then many topics would have been ignored if I hadn't. One time I voiced my opinion very strongly on a story the news director wasn't interested in. By the end of the night that story made The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I also appeared on TV twice each day to talk about the Web. How could the experience not help me? There would be more of a learning curve if I never had that job.
What are all of your roles? How do you break up your day?
I appointed myself as managing editor because my duties are similar to those I had at KERO (ABC23). I manage the site’s content flow and write articles. I take photos and upload photo essays. I take some video, though not as much as when I was at ABC23. I manage other people’s projects within the site as well: nonfiction and advice mostly.
I also take part in any meetings with potential clients and sponsors.
Each day’s journey depends on content. What news does the day have to offer? Is there breaking news? Will I have an original story or just press releases to work with? Will I cover a sporting event? Do I have my own personal writing projects to attend to? I don’t always worry about news right away in the morning because the world just wants news. They’ll read it when its there.
I try to spend time on novels and on my Twitter novel, “Small Places,” each day. The Twitter novel is really important because it keeps generating a buzz on its own as the first original literary novel on Twitter. It’s been featured in the Christian Science Monitor, was the cover story for the North Bay Bohemian, has been mentioned on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and recently had a great mention on Mashable.com. You can even find a link on Face News. Getting personal press is a great way to promote the site!
I look at my world, in which Face News is a part, as a flow of many writings, people, ideas, projects. It’s all part of this synthesis of writing I do.
What are your key content areas?
News and Sports are key. But the site would be nothing in my opinion without Nonfiction. That’s my favorite section! Still experimenting with the LA to Fresno section. I’m letting it stagnate a little as I decide what to try next. I’m always experimenting with different ideas. People like the Advice a lot too. It’s fun.
What percent of the content comes from you? What percent from the community? What do others contribute? How many contributors do you have?
I’m not going to worry about percentages. Most of the content comes from me. Most of the contributors write for the Nonfiction section. I also have an Advice columnist. Most contributors come and go except for my nonfiction team and advice. They’re loyal. I like that: people with a shared vision.
How do you describe your voice on the site?
Depends on what I’m writing. Some is straight up news. Some is conversational. Some is literary. Comments are in a different tone, too.
How do you decide what you'll cover yourself vs. use a press release for? How do you gauge public interest in a topic?
I like to cover sports myself when I can, and certain hard news stories. Just depends on how I feel information flow is on a topic and what kind of buzz I think a story might create. There's always public interest in every story, otherwise I wouldn't run a news site. Sometimes a story is important simply because it would serve the community to know. Sometimes I write stories that discuss what the other local media are saying. This helps provide the community with a wider perspective on a topic. Media frowns on that. But I don't care about media negativity. I care about readers. I've heard derogatory remarks from media, but so what? I've heard KTLA quote the LA Times lots of times. Nothing wrong with quoting the local media outlets. Nothing wrong with original news, and nothing wrong with press releases that are rewritten. It's all part of the content supply.
I'm surprised that your site covers sports when local media covers it so heavily. How does your site's coverage differ to fill an unmet need in the community? (Answer has been edited for length.)
I'm surprised that you're surprised. There's a huge void in Bakersfield in online and print sports coverage. Most sports stories are only put on the web by one company: Bakersfield.com. ABC23 stepped up their game but I was a big part of why they did it. I pushed for it. Who else puts pics on the Web of sports besides Bakersfield.com? Face News does. And per event, we add more photos than any other media outlet. Who else has a Flickr account? High quality photos too. Who else puts video clips of sports on YouTube? Maybe Bakersfield.com. But not the TV stations.
We're also the only local entity who Twitters from sporting events. The Jam, The Condors and now Blaze games have seen "Twitter Highlights of the Game" in sports articles. The Blaze, who are affiliated with the Texas Rangers, have no TV and no radio coverage this year. But I twitter real-time scores and commentary throughout the game. That's innovation right here in Bakersfield. Myself and Jesse Rivera (I have a different person assist on Twitter in each professional sports we cover) sent out Flickr pics, Twitpics and tweets all last Thursday night as the Blaze won their first home game of the season.
Sports has a void in Bakersfield and we're out to fill part of it any way we can. There's a lot of kinds of sports articles that are also waiting to be written. And if I had more time for video and better equipment, we would do more video.
How popular is your site? What are your page views? How many comments? (Answer has been edited for length.)
Face News hasn’t been around long enough to gauge popularity. My goal isn’t to win a popularity contest anyway. Lots of TV, newspaper and radio people read the site. People in Fresno read it, including folks in their media. Face News has been displayed on the home page of the Bakersfield Condors and the homepage of the entire NBA D league. We’ve been mentioned on two radio stations locally, in the Fresno Bee blogs, Bakersfield.com staff blogs, literary blogs and on television news. On Twitter, lots of folks have helped create a buzz from U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy to mommy bloggers like @bakomom. News is news. If it’s engaging, it gets around.
I’d say that’s pretty good as we don’t spend money on marketing and have yet to launch a grassroots campaign locally.
Page views? That’s archaic thinking. Who cares? I run a news site that caters to the community and builds relationships. I don’t ever worry about traffic, though I am aware traffic is down for now because we were down for a week and a half from a hacker attack.
Having worked at a TV station I saw how page views are puffed up for sales purposes. I could go on in great detail about how EVERY news site attempts to puff numbers. Look, though we took a hit recently, we were up to page two under the Google term, “Bakersfield News.” And we’ll get back there and maybe move higher. Sometimes our articles rank higher than local news sites. We compete just because there are few sites that write news content. We compete because we serve the community in a unique manner. I am confident the site is moving up in the world, otherwise so many people wouldn’t care about Face News.
How do you market your site?
Through online social networking tools, personal networking, business networking and partnerships, speaking engagements, and the uncanny ability to create a buzz.
What are your ad rates?
Interested parties can contact me if interested.
Who are your main advertisers?
One of the entities I can talk about is the Bakersfield Jam. Their organization is comprised of people who have a strong sense of community. Imagine if people stepped up who believed as much in baseball or football as the Jam’s investors do about their cause? We’re glad that we fit into their vision of community.
What was the source of your start-up funding?
Private. Yet what’s interesting to note is that as far as the technology goes, Face News was started for less than $100.
What do you see for the future of your site? What are your goals?
Our basic goals are simple: to grow and continue to serve the community. The future of our site depends on whether we and the community continue to share a vision. Will they continue to value Face News? Yesterday the CEO of the Bakersfield Californian left two comment on the site. That says something.
The future of Face News also depends on new partnerships in and outside of Bakersfield. And we’re working on that.
You mentioned a future goal is to become a nonprofit. Why do you want to be a nonprofit and why did you start out as a for-profit venture?
We were already set up as a for-profit company under the Noveltown umbrella. Non-profit has an upside in the area of funding that could possibly enrich the news we do. We're looking into it.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Why I still believe in citizen journalism
A week after I returned to work from maternity leave – and two weeks before I was laid off – I had lunch with Mary Lou Fulton, a vice president at The Bakersfield Californian, whose charge has been to grow audience through new products. She is a mentor and a role model for me, and I would love to do what she does: Start new products, teach others to make them successful, then move on to the next adventure. She is an idea machine. She also has a smooth way of talking that makes me a believer in anything she's pitching.
I needed to have lunch with her because she invigorates me, and I was sorely in need of some inspiration to return to my job as Contributions Editor. While I was on maternity leave, the newspaper had a round of layoffs. I was a pseudo-survivor. While my management-level position was eliminated and my three team members were farmed out to other departments, I was offered to return to a demoted position – still called Contributions Editor – for less pay. I tearfully accepted the position. (I blame post-partum hormones for the tears.) Then I vowed to find another job before my maternity leave was up. Well, job searching while caring for a newborn as a first-time mother is exhausting and frustrating. After many more tears, I gave up and decided to go back to work at The Californian until they escorted me out of the door. As fate would have it, the escort service arrived just three weeks later.
But back to that lunch with Mary Lou. I had been given an assignment which brought back my original fears about citizen journalism – that it was a plot to replace skilled journalists with free labor and lower quality content. My task was to create a long list of people who are connected in the community and ask them to contribute nuggets of news for us to print. With another round of layoffs imminent, was I gathering scabs? No, Mary Lou and I agreed. I was just being proactive about getting news tips, and these tips would be vetted by editors before running in the paper.
The bigger question, Mary Lou asked me, is how can I reach out to undercovered communities so they can have voices on Bakersfield.com and in The Bakersfield Californian. Yes! This is why I loved being the Contributions Editor. With our reporting staff continually shrinking, citizen journalism enabled us to get stories into our products that otherwise wouldn't – couldn't – be told. Mary Lou and I brainstormed ideas for groups to reach out to: nonprofits, churches, schools. Within each group would be a diverse cross-section of our community.
I reminded myself of the reasons I believe in citizen journalism: (And this is straight out of the PowerPoint I've given to fellow journalists)
-- It creates a two-way conversation with your audience.
-- The audience participates in the media, not just consumes it.
-- It eliminates news professionals as gatekeepers of information.
-- It gives your media organization a competitive advantage.
But even more than that, sometimes citizen journalists have great stories to tell. And with a little help from a professional editor, the rocks can be tumbled and shined into gleaming gems. In my two years as Contributions Editor at The Californian, I have laughed, I have cried, I have jumped up from my desk and shared what I just read with a neighboring editor. I've also winced, groaned and rolled my eyes at some really bad writing (especially poetry). But sometimes people would submit the most beautiful photos and the most heartfelt tales.
There was the mother whose son died from an accidental gunshot who wrote about bringing herself to unpack his books to share his love of reading with her stepchildren. There was the military wife who wrote about her excitement for her husband to come home from Iraq for two weeks and celebrate their daughter's second birthday together. And the mother who wrote about what it's like to know her daughter's killer is still on the loose and the case has gone cold. (Stories by mothers are the most powerful to me.)
A common theme among many of the citizen journalism pieces submitted under my watch was that they were deeply personal. Sure, there were press releases by public relations professionals and organizations getting the word out about their events. But most of the stories were about family, friendship, personal achievement, obstacles overcome, and special memories. These are the stories important to our readers and I felt very fortunate as an editor to help them shape and share their stories.
Every contributed article I pitched for print was edited and fact-checked by me. Before I sent the story to the copy desk, I e-mailed it back to the author to make sure I didn't introduce any errors in the editing process and so he or she wouldn't be surprised to see the edits in print. I treated every citizen journalist as if he or she was a staff writer and asked the contributor to fill holes or answer key questions. The editing process on amateur pieces is time consuming but well worth it. Writers often thanked me for making their stories better and our readers got a better product because of it.
Reporters and editors at The Californian also thanked me regularly for taking stories off their hands and working directly with the public. It freed them to do more skilled, investigative work while community members submitted their own hometown news stories. This approach to “hyper-local news” satisfied our readers' needs to see good news in the paper and our staff's needs to focus their time on more in-depth, watchdog reporting.
This is why I still believe in citizen journalism. It gives a voice to the community that the newspaper just can't afford to do themselves. However, the newspaper won't be the venue for this content much longer. As newspapers stop trying to be all things to all people, niche Web sites and publications will fill in the gaps of hyper-local information sharing. All over the country, one-man bands are launching community Web sites to serve their local niche markets. Many use bloggers, freelancers and concerned citizens to write much of the content for these sites.
The Bakersfield Californian, with Mary Lou Fulton's lead, had incredible insight into this future of journalism when it launched Mercado Nuevo. The subsidiary company manages three niche sites with accompanying print products – with nearly all of the content produces by citizen journalists and bloggers. These are The Bakersfield Voice (serving west Bakersfield), Mas Magazine (serving the Latino community), and Bakotopia (serving the youth and music scene). But even these products are being scaled back as the company tightens its belt further and further. Once a bustling company all of its own, Mercado Nuevo's operations are slowly being moved into The Californian's building, with the newsroom now copy editing and designing the print products. After the March layoff, the newsroom has 26 percent fewer staff members doing far more work. And it's going to get worse.
(By the way, why did it make sense for The Bakersfield Californian to eliminate the Contributions Editor position in the last round of layoffs when they seem to need it more than ever? For the same reason they eliminated the Web Editor position when they went Web-first: To charge all newsroom leaders to be contributions editors, just like they made all editors into Web editors. The newspaper is filled with more community content than ever before and they didn't need me alone to do the dirty work.)
The market is wide open in Bakersfield for community members to launch their own Web sites to better serve the local audience. And one man is trying to do just that. Nick Belardes, a local author, has recently created FaceBakersfield.com, a site about local news, sports, pop culture and fiction. I'll be visiting with him soon to learn more about his site and I'll share my insights on this blog.
I needed to have lunch with her because she invigorates me, and I was sorely in need of some inspiration to return to my job as Contributions Editor. While I was on maternity leave, the newspaper had a round of layoffs. I was a pseudo-survivor. While my management-level position was eliminated and my three team members were farmed out to other departments, I was offered to return to a demoted position – still called Contributions Editor – for less pay. I tearfully accepted the position. (I blame post-partum hormones for the tears.) Then I vowed to find another job before my maternity leave was up. Well, job searching while caring for a newborn as a first-time mother is exhausting and frustrating. After many more tears, I gave up and decided to go back to work at The Californian until they escorted me out of the door. As fate would have it, the escort service arrived just three weeks later.
But back to that lunch with Mary Lou. I had been given an assignment which brought back my original fears about citizen journalism – that it was a plot to replace skilled journalists with free labor and lower quality content. My task was to create a long list of people who are connected in the community and ask them to contribute nuggets of news for us to print. With another round of layoffs imminent, was I gathering scabs? No, Mary Lou and I agreed. I was just being proactive about getting news tips, and these tips would be vetted by editors before running in the paper.
The bigger question, Mary Lou asked me, is how can I reach out to undercovered communities so they can have voices on Bakersfield.com and in The Bakersfield Californian. Yes! This is why I loved being the Contributions Editor. With our reporting staff continually shrinking, citizen journalism enabled us to get stories into our products that otherwise wouldn't – couldn't – be told. Mary Lou and I brainstormed ideas for groups to reach out to: nonprofits, churches, schools. Within each group would be a diverse cross-section of our community.
I reminded myself of the reasons I believe in citizen journalism: (And this is straight out of the PowerPoint I've given to fellow journalists)
-- It creates a two-way conversation with your audience.
-- The audience participates in the media, not just consumes it.
-- It eliminates news professionals as gatekeepers of information.
-- It gives your media organization a competitive advantage.
But even more than that, sometimes citizen journalists have great stories to tell. And with a little help from a professional editor, the rocks can be tumbled and shined into gleaming gems. In my two years as Contributions Editor at The Californian, I have laughed, I have cried, I have jumped up from my desk and shared what I just read with a neighboring editor. I've also winced, groaned and rolled my eyes at some really bad writing (especially poetry). But sometimes people would submit the most beautiful photos and the most heartfelt tales.
There was the mother whose son died from an accidental gunshot who wrote about bringing herself to unpack his books to share his love of reading with her stepchildren. There was the military wife who wrote about her excitement for her husband to come home from Iraq for two weeks and celebrate their daughter's second birthday together. And the mother who wrote about what it's like to know her daughter's killer is still on the loose and the case has gone cold. (Stories by mothers are the most powerful to me.)
A common theme among many of the citizen journalism pieces submitted under my watch was that they were deeply personal. Sure, there were press releases by public relations professionals and organizations getting the word out about their events. But most of the stories were about family, friendship, personal achievement, obstacles overcome, and special memories. These are the stories important to our readers and I felt very fortunate as an editor to help them shape and share their stories.
Every contributed article I pitched for print was edited and fact-checked by me. Before I sent the story to the copy desk, I e-mailed it back to the author to make sure I didn't introduce any errors in the editing process and so he or she wouldn't be surprised to see the edits in print. I treated every citizen journalist as if he or she was a staff writer and asked the contributor to fill holes or answer key questions. The editing process on amateur pieces is time consuming but well worth it. Writers often thanked me for making their stories better and our readers got a better product because of it.
Reporters and editors at The Californian also thanked me regularly for taking stories off their hands and working directly with the public. It freed them to do more skilled, investigative work while community members submitted their own hometown news stories. This approach to “hyper-local news” satisfied our readers' needs to see good news in the paper and our staff's needs to focus their time on more in-depth, watchdog reporting.
This is why I still believe in citizen journalism. It gives a voice to the community that the newspaper just can't afford to do themselves. However, the newspaper won't be the venue for this content much longer. As newspapers stop trying to be all things to all people, niche Web sites and publications will fill in the gaps of hyper-local information sharing. All over the country, one-man bands are launching community Web sites to serve their local niche markets. Many use bloggers, freelancers and concerned citizens to write much of the content for these sites.
The Bakersfield Californian, with Mary Lou Fulton's lead, had incredible insight into this future of journalism when it launched Mercado Nuevo. The subsidiary company manages three niche sites with accompanying print products – with nearly all of the content produces by citizen journalists and bloggers. These are The Bakersfield Voice (serving west Bakersfield), Mas Magazine (serving the Latino community), and Bakotopia (serving the youth and music scene). But even these products are being scaled back as the company tightens its belt further and further. Once a bustling company all of its own, Mercado Nuevo's operations are slowly being moved into The Californian's building, with the newsroom now copy editing and designing the print products. After the March layoff, the newsroom has 26 percent fewer staff members doing far more work. And it's going to get worse.
(By the way, why did it make sense for The Bakersfield Californian to eliminate the Contributions Editor position in the last round of layoffs when they seem to need it more than ever? For the same reason they eliminated the Web Editor position when they went Web-first: To charge all newsroom leaders to be contributions editors, just like they made all editors into Web editors. The newspaper is filled with more community content than ever before and they didn't need me alone to do the dirty work.)
The market is wide open in Bakersfield for community members to launch their own Web sites to better serve the local audience. And one man is trying to do just that. Nick Belardes, a local author, has recently created FaceBakersfield.com, a site about local news, sports, pop culture and fiction. I'll be visiting with him soon to learn more about his site and I'll share my insights on this blog.
Monday, March 30, 2009
So how do you make money doing this?
Each time I have spoken about multimedia and citizen journalism to a room full of journalists, someone always asks the inevitable question – the one question I've never been able to answer: “So how do you make money doing this?”
My answer was this: “We don't.” Our paychecks were still paid for by advertising and subscription revenue from The Bakersfield Californian. We did not sell sponsorships for our Podcasts or video ads for the pre-roll in our video player. All content on Bakersfield.com is accessible for free. The newsroom didn't worry about how to make money, we just tried to grow our online audience by experimenting with new forms of storytelling. Wasn't it up to our advertising department to sell the Web site?
Journalists were learning new tricks without a business model to back them up. During the housing boom earlier this decade, as The Californian's budget got fat from real estate advertising, we spent money left and right on new equipment and training. We added new positions, like a fulltime videographer and a multimedia editor. But no company leaders were bridging the gap between the newsroom and advertising to come up with ways to sustain our new endeavors. Our video hits were growing exponentially, but our company didn't monetize them. Perhaps the newsroom could have done more to figure out how to make money, but we were operating with that ethical wall between us and advertising. As the multimedia editor, I was not encouraged to sell pre-roll ads. But if I realized it meant my paycheck, perhaps I would have sought sponsorships. The success of the newspaper falls on everyone's shoulders, from the people who deliver the product in the morning to those who put it to bed at night. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the advertising department never approached the newsroom to find out what we were doing on the Web and how they might be able to sell it to advertisers or sponsors.
Meanwhile, The Bakersfield Californian was not ignoring its future. It had big plans that did not include the newsroom whatsoever. The company formed a subsidiary called Mercado Nuevo (“new market” in Spanish) which would attempt to be what The Californian could not: An incubator of new ideas and new products, without the wall between editorial and advertising, and – more importantly – without the wall between product and audience. The Northwest Voice, under the leadership of our Vice President of Audience Mary Lou Fulton, was the first of these Web-first publications to be created with 100 percent community submitted content. It was followed by Bakotopia (a music and youth-oriented Web site and magazine), Mas (a Latino Web site and magazine), and The Southwest Voice (serving southwest Bakersfield - now merged with the northwest publication to be simply The Bakersfield Voice). Was this to be the “newsroom” of the future?
I remember the first time we in the newsroom heard about The Northwest Voice. Our northwest Bakersfield reporter was mad – was she going to get scooped by our own company? We were appalled that we were going to publish articles written by the public. They had no training. They were not professional journalists. What was our worth if we were just going to use community content? And why was the company sinking money and resources into this rag instead of the newsroom so we could do a better job of covering the northwest community ourselves?
At the time, I had just become the “online content editor” in the newsroom – the first newsroom Web position at The Californian (a position I pitched to our bosses and for which I wrote the job description). I immediately applied to attend the multimedia bootcamp at UC Berkeley put on by the Knight Digital Media Center. That was where I realized our reputation as a company preceded me. Mary Lou Fulton travels the world speaking about The Californian, its new products, and its citizen journalism efforts. As I introduced myself to people at the workshop, about every other person would say, “Bakersfield? Mary Lou Fulton? The Northwest Voice? You guys are doing awesome, groundbreaking things down there. Great to meet you.” I kept a professional attitude and my mouth shut, although I wanted to say, “The Voice? That rag? Putting professional journalists out of business?”
How ironic that two years later I would become the Contributions Editor at The Californian, doing exactly what The Voice had done, and evangelizing citizen journalism to the same group of multimedia bootcampers at Berkeley each time I returned as a guest speaker. And, of course, still answering that question about revenue. How do you make money doing this? We don't.
More to come ...
My answer was this: “We don't.” Our paychecks were still paid for by advertising and subscription revenue from The Bakersfield Californian. We did not sell sponsorships for our Podcasts or video ads for the pre-roll in our video player. All content on Bakersfield.com is accessible for free. The newsroom didn't worry about how to make money, we just tried to grow our online audience by experimenting with new forms of storytelling. Wasn't it up to our advertising department to sell the Web site?
Journalists were learning new tricks without a business model to back them up. During the housing boom earlier this decade, as The Californian's budget got fat from real estate advertising, we spent money left and right on new equipment and training. We added new positions, like a fulltime videographer and a multimedia editor. But no company leaders were bridging the gap between the newsroom and advertising to come up with ways to sustain our new endeavors. Our video hits were growing exponentially, but our company didn't monetize them. Perhaps the newsroom could have done more to figure out how to make money, but we were operating with that ethical wall between us and advertising. As the multimedia editor, I was not encouraged to sell pre-roll ads. But if I realized it meant my paycheck, perhaps I would have sought sponsorships. The success of the newspaper falls on everyone's shoulders, from the people who deliver the product in the morning to those who put it to bed at night. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the advertising department never approached the newsroom to find out what we were doing on the Web and how they might be able to sell it to advertisers or sponsors.
Meanwhile, The Bakersfield Californian was not ignoring its future. It had big plans that did not include the newsroom whatsoever. The company formed a subsidiary called Mercado Nuevo (“new market” in Spanish) which would attempt to be what The Californian could not: An incubator of new ideas and new products, without the wall between editorial and advertising, and – more importantly – without the wall between product and audience. The Northwest Voice, under the leadership of our Vice President of Audience Mary Lou Fulton, was the first of these Web-first publications to be created with 100 percent community submitted content. It was followed by Bakotopia (a music and youth-oriented Web site and magazine), Mas (a Latino Web site and magazine), and The Southwest Voice (serving southwest Bakersfield - now merged with the northwest publication to be simply The Bakersfield Voice). Was this to be the “newsroom” of the future?
I remember the first time we in the newsroom heard about The Northwest Voice. Our northwest Bakersfield reporter was mad – was she going to get scooped by our own company? We were appalled that we were going to publish articles written by the public. They had no training. They were not professional journalists. What was our worth if we were just going to use community content? And why was the company sinking money and resources into this rag instead of the newsroom so we could do a better job of covering the northwest community ourselves?
At the time, I had just become the “online content editor” in the newsroom – the first newsroom Web position at The Californian (a position I pitched to our bosses and for which I wrote the job description). I immediately applied to attend the multimedia bootcamp at UC Berkeley put on by the Knight Digital Media Center. That was where I realized our reputation as a company preceded me. Mary Lou Fulton travels the world speaking about The Californian, its new products, and its citizen journalism efforts. As I introduced myself to people at the workshop, about every other person would say, “Bakersfield? Mary Lou Fulton? The Northwest Voice? You guys are doing awesome, groundbreaking things down there. Great to meet you.” I kept a professional attitude and my mouth shut, although I wanted to say, “The Voice? That rag? Putting professional journalists out of business?”
How ironic that two years later I would become the Contributions Editor at The Californian, doing exactly what The Voice had done, and evangelizing citizen journalism to the same group of multimedia bootcampers at Berkeley each time I returned as a guest speaker. And, of course, still answering that question about revenue. How do you make money doing this? We don't.
More to come ...
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Drowning in Kool-Aid
It's not like I'm a dinosaur unwilling to change with the times. I have been one of the biggest Kool-Aid drinkers at The Bakersfield Californian, hands down. I helped man the Kool-Aid stand. Armed with my master's degree from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, I helped bring that newsroom into the 21st century. As the first online editor in that newsroom, and then as multimedia editor, I helped launch blogs, podcasting, video, interactive Flash graphics, audio slideshows, and posting breaking news. I taught the entire reporting staff to record and edit audio and video. I taught them how to do voice-overs, write copy for our weekly news podcast, storyboard a video, and make themselves into human tripods by tucking their elbows while holding the point-and-shoot video cameras. The apex of our multimedia coverage was the Vincent Brothers trial, during which the Web team created a special section on our Web site with an interactive Flash graphic of the crime scene, major players, timeline and more. Our court reporter blogged the entire trial. Our staff of three videographers edited two to three videos each day from DVDs recorded by the video pool. It was a lot of work but well worth it, and I have to give a shout-out to then-Web Editor Davin McHenry for leading the whole project.
Then, when multimedia moved to our “visual department” (formerly known as the photo department), I took the gig as Contributions Editor. It was a step up, to management, with a higher salary and proof again that I was a proponent of the future of news. I believed that citizen journalists would not replace our skilled reporting staff, but augment our ability to cover news at the hyper-local level. Why waste our reporters' time when someone could write a moving and personal story about her grandmother's 100th birthday (with a little help from me, the editor). Citizen journalism gave our readers a voice in our products, offered the platform for that all-important two-way conversation between the newspaper and our audience, allowed us to print stories important to our readers that we just didn't have the staff to cover. For two years, I espoused the wonders of user-generated-content. There were some real successes in there, such as our 30th anniversary package of the giant dust storm of 1977 which blanketed Bakersfield and Arvin with a thick layer of dirt and tore down houses, trees and powerlines with the 60-mile per hour winds. A former meteorologist from Bakersfield wrote the mainbar and we got dozens of reader-submitted memories and photos that we ran with the A1 package. Our environment reporter was slammed at the time and grateful that we handled the story as a citizen journalism project.
Between the multimedia and contributions editor gigs, I was honored to receive the prestigious Publisher's Excellence Award from our publisher Ginger Moorhouse, who gave five such awards each year to employees who exemplified our superb customer service and work ethic. At that point, I was on top of my game and The Bakersfield Californian was a leader in our industry. As the first newspaper to create Web sites and niche publications with 100 percent citizen contributions, our company leaders and I were in high demand to speak at conferences and host international visitors. I can't count how many contingents toured our newsroom and peppered me with questions about our hyper-local projects, multimedia and Web successes. The Northwest Voice, Southwest Voice, (now merged as The Bakersfield Voice), Bakotopia, Mas Magazine, and Raising Bakersfield niche products served audiences in geographic, youth, Latino and parenting niche markets. We were set up to succeed even if the flagship product, The Bakersfield Californian, were to tank in readership and advertising.
So what happened? If we were so destined for greatness, why did we fall? More to come ...
Then, when multimedia moved to our “visual department” (formerly known as the photo department), I took the gig as Contributions Editor. It was a step up, to management, with a higher salary and proof again that I was a proponent of the future of news. I believed that citizen journalists would not replace our skilled reporting staff, but augment our ability to cover news at the hyper-local level. Why waste our reporters' time when someone could write a moving and personal story about her grandmother's 100th birthday (with a little help from me, the editor). Citizen journalism gave our readers a voice in our products, offered the platform for that all-important two-way conversation between the newspaper and our audience, allowed us to print stories important to our readers that we just didn't have the staff to cover. For two years, I espoused the wonders of user-generated-content. There were some real successes in there, such as our 30th anniversary package of the giant dust storm of 1977 which blanketed Bakersfield and Arvin with a thick layer of dirt and tore down houses, trees and powerlines with the 60-mile per hour winds. A former meteorologist from Bakersfield wrote the mainbar and we got dozens of reader-submitted memories and photos that we ran with the A1 package. Our environment reporter was slammed at the time and grateful that we handled the story as a citizen journalism project.
Between the multimedia and contributions editor gigs, I was honored to receive the prestigious Publisher's Excellence Award from our publisher Ginger Moorhouse, who gave five such awards each year to employees who exemplified our superb customer service and work ethic. At that point, I was on top of my game and The Bakersfield Californian was a leader in our industry. As the first newspaper to create Web sites and niche publications with 100 percent citizen contributions, our company leaders and I were in high demand to speak at conferences and host international visitors. I can't count how many contingents toured our newsroom and peppered me with questions about our hyper-local projects, multimedia and Web successes. The Northwest Voice, Southwest Voice, (now merged as The Bakersfield Voice), Bakotopia, Mas Magazine, and Raising Bakersfield niche products served audiences in geographic, youth, Latino and parenting niche markets. We were set up to succeed even if the flagship product, The Bakersfield Californian, were to tank in readership and advertising.
So what happened? If we were so destined for greatness, why did we fall? More to come ...
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