Thanksgiving turkey leftovers are still in the fridge, but I’m already anxious for the first year of the new decade.
Why? Because 2010 will be the year of the Independent Journalism Startup. (There’s also the Winter Olympics and World Cup soccer, but I digress.)
Several interesting new initiatives have been announced or launched recently, including the San Diego News Network, Albritton’s new DC-area operation, the Bay Area News Project, Texas Tribune and Peer News. When you add these high-profile efforts to the ecosystem of innovative digital news operations already publishing, it’s logical that 12 months from now we will know a lot more about the future of news than we do today.
Each of these new enterprises will have different areas of focus, both topical and (obviously) geographical. In order to flourish in 2010, and for years to come, every independent journalism startup needs to take advantage of its digitally native birth and commit to a new order, one that legacy news companies have struggled with.
Here are 5 commitments that should be part of the core mission from day one:
1. Innovative technology: Publishing in the digital age requires innovation and agility. The tools are out there, but you need skills on staff to take full advantage. The newly launched Texas Tribune gets this, as about a quarter of the staff positions are tech-related. The Huffington Post is also tech-heavy, which explains how they have been able to grow such a huge audience in such a short time with relatively small amounts of original content. Committing to technology innovation doesn’t mean developing your own content management system or building everything from scratch, however. It means being able to execute ideas as quickly as possible and support the other four commitments on this list.
2. Entrepreneurial focus: Whether a for-profit or a non-profit, every news operation needs to find innovative business models. Yes, plural, because the new ecosystem demands a diversified approach to revenue generation. Advertising is one, and some hyperlocals have more demand then they can supply, so don’t start with an “advertising won’t support news” prejudice. Different forms of advertising mixed with income from other digital marketing services, reseller relationships, local events and maybe even specialized paid content strategies can combine to support a significant local news operation. Just ask the Sacramento Press or Pegasus News. Jeff Jarvis and the City University of New York have been doing a lot of hard work in this area and have built a go-to repository of resources and information.
3. Collaboration: Last month, Next Door Media and its flagship local site MyBallard won the award for user community at the Online News Assocation conference in San Francisco. As much as 90 percent of the stories published on the site originate through tips from readers. A few weeks later, the West Seattle Blog‘s Tracy Record participated on a panel discussion about the future of news sitting next to MSNBC.com president Charlie Tillinghast. Record is a great journalist, but she wouldn’t be the posterchild for independent journalism startups – and MyBallard wouldn’t have won a national award – if not for their audiences. Record often says they don’t have “readers,” they have a community. The first step in launching a new local news startup should be to identify, meet and begin working with the local community it hopes to serve. As important as the journalism you’re sure to produce will be, you need them way more than they need you. (For more examples of journo-collaboration, visit beatblogging.org.)
4. Mobile: CNN is widely recongized as having developed the best mobile application for a news organization, as much for its iReport features that allow the audience to contribute photos and news as its integrated video streams. That’s a start. Mobile, by definition, is local since more and more devices know where the user is at any given time. Local news organizations need to use that to their advantage, like Media General does with its hundreds of mobile bloggers reporting high school football scores in the state of Ohio. And the viral success of social apps like Foursquare should demonstrate to every local publisher how mobile can build community. Don’t get caught thinking that publishing your existing content on a mobile device is good enough (like news publishers did with the web in the 1990s).
5. Community: Similar to Commitment No. 3 this is about building a trusted network of connections among people with ideas and information to share with one another. It starts with the usual mechanisms like comments on blog posts, news stories and message board forums. But it should extend far beyond that, both online and offline. Online, it means connecting people from where they already communicate, like blogs, Twitter and Facebook. For examples, see ChicagoNow’s blog aggregation and the LA Times’ geographically organized Twitter lists. It also means deploying better technology to facilitate the exchange of information, like The Stranger, a Seattle alt-weekly, has done with Questionland and Electionland. Offline, it means a commitment to educate and entertain, as well as inform. Hosting local events with speakers and panel discussions or meetups and Tweet-ups, based on locally relevant topics, can allow a virtual community to come together physically and be strengthened. (Which is probably why The Texas Tribune has an events coordinator on staff.)
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The success or failure of these new endeavors will be based on execution, not ideas, of course. The editors, reporters, bloggers and community managers will need to connect with local audiences in a new way. Each operation will find different paths to success, since the “customers” will be different in each market and, therefore, have different needs.
“To maximize a news organization’s social capital and marketability,” I wrote a year ago in an article for the Nieman Reports entitled, The End of Journalism as Usual, “its journalism today must be transparent, authentic and collaborative.”
That still applies to the today in 2009 and the one next year in 2010. The good news is that the tools and technology to make that happen keep getting better. So an effort to be transparent, authentic and collaborative is easier today than it was 12 months ago. And it will be even easier 12 months from now, when we look back on 2010 and see how the future of news developed right in front of our eyes.
Mark Briggs 
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