Watch Your Tone, Missy

A frequent comment I heard during my trip to Los Angeles was that my site needs to have an edge. What is it's tone? Here goes:

The maven is a stylish nerd. She loves curling up with RFPs and highlighting all the jargon and numbers. She’s tickled pink when she gets business cards from mid-level City Hall staffers. For her, the best feeling in the world is to post an article and have readers say, “I didn’t know this. That’s outrageous!”

The maven is also a perfectionist. She gets up at 5 a.m. every morning to hike through the Santa Monica Mountains. Her skirts are perfectly pressed and her hair always has just the right amount of volume. She is one of those women who are always prepared with extra batteries, duct tape, foot petals and Band-Aids.

Everyone smiles when they see the maven, and why shouldn’t they – she’s witty and charming. She makes time to stop by parties for a drink, even when she’s been up all night baking chocolate chip cookies for her fellow reporters.

The maven has great joy for her life.

All that being said, what does it mean for her reporting and writing?

Waste, inefficiencies and lies are personally offensive to the maven. Any hint of a politician behaving in a way that puts himself before his constituents drives her crazy. She believes it’s her responsibility to hold elected officials accountable and empower Angelenos to get personally involved with their city. The maven loves Los Angeles and wants it to be the best city it can be.

The maven believes in tough love.

Tweet Tweet

Tweet, tweet. What’s that, a cute baby chick?

Nope, it’s just the network of friends, coworkers, reporters, gadflys and major corporations pounding down the virtual wall of my computer. Every minute of every hour of every day.

I was a Twitter holdout for a long time. I didn’t see its value and it seemed like one more thing to steal away my time and attention. I finally caved in March when a professor told us we could pick up extra credit by tweeting articles related to our course materials. Extra credit – it’s my kryptonite. I went home that day and joined Twitter as fast as I could. Thank goodness I did because without those two extra points, I’m sure my A would have … still been an A (OK, not the point ).

I am five months into my Twitter experience and I have to say I dislike it even more now than I did before. Seriously – the site is user-unfriendly, unorganized and I’m constantly stuck looking at that stupid whale.

All that said, I still created an account – twitter.com/TheCityMaven – for the project when I started putting together the website and a web presence. I see Twitter as a tip sheet. It’s a way to grab headlines and news updates. Plus, it’s important to keep an eye on the tweets of politicians, department heads and press deputies. If you don’t, there’s the danger of missing gems like this:

Last quarter I took a class called Building Networked Audiences, and one of the areas of study was social media. It wasn't content that we focused on but rather the physical and electronic structures of networks. One site that does this is Klout. It measures Twitter influence based on:

1. True Reach
2. Amplification Probability
3. Network Influence

True Reach is the size of the “engaged audience,” meaning the number of followers minus spammers and inactive accounts. Amplification Probability considers the diversity of the audience, the likelihood that a person’s tweet will be retweeted, and the effectiveness in generating new followers, retweets and @ replies. Network Influence, finally, is the influence level of the engaged audience.

Klout provides an even more detailed explanation on its website but you get the idea.

I looked up Klout scores for a couple of LA media outlets. On a scale of 1 to 100, LAist has a 65. NBC4 has a 31. LATimes has a 78. LAObserved has a 46.

These numbers leave me with some questions: what is the true “influence” that these sites have? I understand within the context of Twitter, but what about within the context of something that actually matters? Do the people behind these accounts actually have clout when they need to get ahold of an elected official? Do they have the ability to set news agendas?

Twitter has critical mass on its side, for now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows itself to be an important tool for marketers. Maybe it will continue to be a tip sheet for reporters (and a place where anonymous strangers hilariously impersonate famous dudes) but I don’t see the staying power. The problem with 140 characters is the same problem with the useless ticker streaming on cable news stations – it trains us to believe we’ve been told the most important piece of information and anything else would be ancillary. Can't we all agree by this point that if a public person's statement includes 2, U, @, ;) , reload, or patently false and misleading facts, then there's more to the story?

Born to Run

The work of Project Goldfish has coincided with my training for the Chicago Half-Marathon. I am not a businesswoman, nor am I a runner so … what better time to take on two huge challenges than at the exact same time. My father has, in the past, referred to me as the Energizer Bunny. I should really look into having one of my batteries removed.

Anywho …

This summer has been about building strength and endurance, challenging myself physically and mentally, and falling short or failing before I – ultimately – succeed. Running has been my greatest stress release when I can’t take one more minute of financial projections and Wordpress widgets.

Things are moving right along with Project Goldfish and, in addition to my family, friends, peanut butter and the Real Housewives of New Jersey, a major source of inspiration and motivation has been the book Born to Run. Written by journalist Christopher McDougall, it is the true story of an incredible tribe of super athletes living in the canyons of Mexico. These men, women and children run incredible distances with apparent ease. Running defines their way of life. Running frees them.

I read this book with a pencil in my hand to underline, star and mark quotes and entire passages. What I love about these quotes is that they are not simply about running – they’re a way of looking at life. (Disclaimer: I’m starting to sound sort of hippy-dippy. This is very unlike me. However, this book hit me in a way that most materials do not.)

“… I should have been there when this ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn't. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations, man.”

When I made the decision to enroll at Medill, I told people I was sick and tired of reporters wringing their hands and worrying “What will become of journalism?” I decided I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines. Someone needs to find a new economic model for journalism, so why shouldn’t it be me? I am smart and enthusiastic and capable – I am just as likely as anyone else to make a major contribution to journalism. I’m not saying Project Goldfish is the answer but I think it’s something.

“Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.”

At first, this sentence seems pretty dark, doesn’t it? I imagine a disillusioned 15-year-old, sitting in her bedroom, picking at her black nail polish and crying that the world Just. Doesn’t. Get it. So dark, so dramatic. OK, but the more I thought about this line, the more I liked it because pain can be frustration, anger, stress, anxiety or fear. Sometimes these are necessary because …

“Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, may we find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstructions.”

There is a light at the end of that pain. I completely agree that to grow, we have to push through all the “fatigue and distress.” Did I ever, in my wildest dreams, think I would run 10 miles? No, but I can, and I can do it because I pushed through miles 7, 8 and 9.

“You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love – everything we sentimentally call our ‘passions’ and ‘desires’ – it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.”

There is nothing else I want to be doing right now. I love this project. I believe in it. I’ve barely left my apartment in three days because of it (I left yesterday to stock up on more peanut butter and Pirate Booty. I have the diet of a 5-year-old). We’re meant to push ourselves. Finishing this project, so I can get my master’s degree, so I can get back to my career, so I can make journalism better for the audience – as oppose to advertisers and moguls – is as necessary to me as food, rent and Facebook.

The mental challenge of running is a wonderful way to think about the challenges of school, work and life. When all else fails, I take a deep breath, relax and repeat the words of my Coach Richard:

If you’re not fainting or puking, KEEP GOING.

So Close

Think Tank of Awesomeness

And I’m back!

It was a very busy but incredibly productive four days in Los Angeles. The good news is that it sounds like I’m on the right track with Project Goldfish. People agree there is a need for the type of reporting I want to do. It was encouraging to see other people get excited about an idea that I have spent so much time putting together.

The three aspects of Project Goldfish are:

1. Original reporting on city government and its policy decisions
2. An online community to foster discussions on those policies
3. An aggregation of public documents that give readers access to ordinances, motions, letters, reports

With that structure in mind, here are some of the highlights from my interviews last week:

Overwhelming support for the aggregation of public documents:

There are two major benefits to providing a one-stop shop of documents – it can empower readers to get involved and feel connected to their city government and it can be a useful tool to businesses and groups that need to stay up-to-date on legislation.

Strong support for live-streaming and live-blogging events such as town hall meetings:

It’s difficult for reporters to write stories on town hall meetings. The meetings are typically in the evening and run past newspaper and television deadlines. Plus, you usually have to sit there for two or three hours to get anything that is useable. But, that doesn’t mean town hall meetings aren’t important – they are. With Project Goldfish, I propose live streaming these meetings onto the web site while a reporter live blogs the public comments. At the end of the evening, the video could be edited down to a two minute highlight reel. This has the added benefit of giving readers the opportunity to watch and listen to meetings that take place halfway across town.

Politicians are always looking for a way to get out their message and would be interested in a weekly, half-hour video chat:

I’ve mentioned this on here before but I would love to spend a half an hour a week with a newsmaker via a video chat. Readers could send in questions (maybe even Skype in questions) to find out what is going on in that council district, neighborhood council or city department. It is a way of making City Hall real and accessible.

Angelenos are unable to identify with their council members and would benefit from knowing about their backgrounds, personalities and power within council

Before launching the site, I need to decide Project Goldfish’s personality and tone:

There was general agreement from theses interviews that the site needs to have some sort of an edge to capture readers’ attention. One of my interviewees gave me the same advice he received from Warren Christopher – CRUSADE. He said I should find angry, young reporters and unleash them. Hmm, I think that is a little too extreme for my taste (I’m all for anger but it has to be directed and it has to be productive). Though the reporting will be fair and accurate, I do agree that Project Goldfish needs to start from a point of view. How do I see City Hall?

Civic-minded Angelenos are a vastly underserved audience

Material could be sold to the Los Angeles Times and Daily News through a financial partnership similar to the Chicago News Cooperative’s relationship with The New York Times

Editorial and business decisions must be made in silos

With these thoughts in mind, I'm updating my business plan and imaging how I'll incorporate everything into the website. I’m hard at work. Really, see:

Coffee! Papers! Pens! Work! Work! Work!

Los Angeles Weecap by the Numbers

4 days

11 meetings

240 miles

5 Starbucks, 2 Coffee Beans and an IHOP

1 parking ticket

1,000 ideas

10 days to go

Sometimes It All Feels Like This

Members Only

This past week I found myself in a flood of articles on membership, subscriptions, paywalls and the monetization of online journalism.

An opinion piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal makes the argument that consumers are willing to pay for news. Peter Funt argues that we’ve already seen consumers are willing to pay for television if it includes “convenience, commercial-free viewing, high video quality, plus various ‘bonus’ features that (create) perceived value.” The same is true with radio when it has “high-quality audio, largely free of ads, with a vast array of channels to please many tastes.”

Funt is correct in pointing out that in paying for television and radio programming that has traditionally been free, consumers expect added benefits in terms of quality and exclusivity. DVDs, HBO, satellite radio all improve the experience of watching TV and listening to music or talk radio. What can news outlets do to improve the experience of reading or watching the news?

Sites like The Texas Tribune and MinnPost are looking to answer that question and pick up revenue in the process via membership. Ken Doctor explains the state of membership in a recent piece for the Nieman Journalism Lab. According to the article, The Texas Tribune has 1,700 members, with a goal of reaching 10,000 members. Members, on average, pay $100. Over at MinnPost, there are 2,000 members. In 2009, membership brought in $360,000 for the site.

Doctor then gets into some interesting math. MinnPost found people who visited the site at least twice a month were the most likely to sign up as members. Of those 40,000 visitors, executives hope to turn 5 percent – 2,000 people – into members.

GlobalPost is another news site that is pursuing membership as a revenue source. Phil Balboni, who runs the site, hopes to get 1 percent of his 900,000 unique monthly visitors to become members. With each member paying $30, that would generate $270,000.

After reading these articles, I started playing around with some numbers for Project Goldfish. I am proposing that the revenue streams for the site be:

• Advertising
• Membership
• Subscription

My current proposal and business plan call for all articles to be free and available to everyone. Membership would provide access to the online community, The Watercooler, where readers could pose questions, converse and debate with other audience members. I would hope and expect that with paying customers posting under their real names, the conversation would elevate above derogatory and off-topic comments.

To figure out how many members I can expect, I first had to estimate the overall traffic to the site. Using Compete, I researched traffic metrics for 27 news sites in Los Angeles. Specifically, I looked at unique visitors. My goal with Project Goldfish is to have 100,000 unique visitors two years out from the launch date. That would put my traffic somewhere between The Jewish Journal and LAObserved.

With 100,000 unique visitors in mind, I used a 1 percent conversion rate and 5 percent conversion rate and assumed members would pay an annual fee of $30:

Membership, I think, would appeal to individuals.

A subscription would appeal to firms and corporations. A subscription would provide access to pay:

• PDF copies of ordinances, government reports and non-confidential correspondents
• Budgetary documents and amendments
• City contracts
• Complete listing of City Hall council and committee meetings
• Complete listing of Neighborhood Council meetings and events
• Weekly video chats with newsmakers
• Access to early morning and late-night news roundups via email

It is basically an aggregation of documents, both paper and electronic. Think of it as a one-stop reference tool. The subscription would cost $100 a year.

Oh California Oh

This weekend I watched the Joan Rivers documentary, “A Piece of Work.” In the film, Rivers’ agent talks about one of the first times he met with Richard Pryor. The agent sat down with the comedian and laid out a master plan for his career, explaining projects that were six and 12 months down the road. Pryor looked at the agent and said, “That’s all great but what the f--- are we gonna do Monday?”

That’s how I feel. It’s great to have big visions and ideas, to think about how I’ll achieve something and plan it all to death. But, you still have to get up in the morning and make it happen.

With that in mind, I have a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles on deck for Aug. 10^th to the 13^th. I had been thinking for some time that it would be useful to go out to L.A. as part of my independent study then, all of the sudden, I looked at the calendar and realized that the quarter is quickly coming to an end. So, off to Los Angeles I go.

The purpose of the trip is to talk to journalists, professors and political types about political and governmental reporting in the city. What gaps do they see in coverage? What types of stories are poorly or inconsistently reported? My adviser pointed out to me that if I’m going after an audience that already reads the Los Angeles Times, then I have to find the stories The Times doesn’t have. I have 10 interviews lined up so far, with another three in the works. I’m sure it will be exhausting.

The trip is added motivation to get this project done. The various elements I have written up for the business plan – a positioning statement, a market and competitive analysis, the financials – are being compiled into one final document. My sketches for the website are getting photoshopped and coded. The Twitter and Facebook pages will, I expect, be public in another week or two.

In between my interviews, I want to photograph iconic images of Los Angeles that can be used on the Project Goldfish website. “Iconic” images being a little bit of what tourists would expect to see – the Hollywood sign, City Hall, the LAX sign – and a lot of what Angelenos would expect to see. I want to capture what makes Los Angeles home to more than 3 million people. [Update: As I was writing this, Kevin Roderick posted a link to news photographer Bryan Frank’s photographs of the city: http://coolshots.blogspot.com/.]

I also added The City at Stake to my reading list. Raphael Sonenshein’s book on Los Angeles’ charter reform is one that should probably be in my library of L.A. books regardless, but I expect it will be particularly helpful as I navigate the political-governmental divide of stories.

Spending a few days in California will make this project feel “real,” as will finding investors. Last week I contacted the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce, which pointed me toward the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. The group’s very helpful website includes a section on financing and within that, there is an even better list of Southern California venture capitalist firms. I spent time Friday researching every firm on the list. I found four that specialize in financing media and online start-ups.

I briefly thought about just knocking on the firms’ doors and asking for a suitcase full of cash. I have a winning personality and that’s all it takes, right? Hmm … well, maybe it takes an actual proposal. With that in mind, I’ve reached out to venture capitalists I know here in Chicago to ask them how I approach investors and what they will expect to see from me in a start-up proposal.

The greatest challenge in the next two weeks is finding an answer to the question everyone asks me: How are you going to make money? Sigh. I’m meeting with another professor on Wednesday for help on estimating impressions and contracting with an ad network. Another small step toward the greater vision.

Design Star

In Googled, Ken Auletta goes into great detail about Google’s hiring process. After describing the lengthy and tedious interview process, Auletta writes that the new hires became “employee number 26” or “employee number 84.” I want my employee number 2 to be the tech guy.

I find the task of creating the Project Goldfish website to be very daunting. It isn’t so much the how of making the site, because I seem to have that down, but it’s the how do I make this good? “Good” meaning both in aesthetics and function. I do not want the site to look like a traditional newspaper website, nor do I want it to look like a blog. Aesthetically, I think the site should be fresh, clean, modern and authoritative. I was going to add “youthful” to that listing, in place of modern, but it seems in conflict with having an authoritative voice.

The functionality of the site is something I struggle with because I keep asking myself this question: What is the best way to tell a story? For the time being, Project Goldfish will be dominated by words, not pictures or videos. So, what can I do with those words? First, I think reports, letters and ordinances that are referenced in stories should also be linked to those stories. The Los Angeles Times does this to an extent but I think it should be the Project Goldfish standard. Why not give the audience the same materials we have as reporters? If my reporters and I do our jobs, our stories will give readers context, history and perspective that go beyond the words in a committee report. This would also allow Project Goldfish to become a resource for readers who want to pull files in a pinch.

I also want to revolutionize how readers comment on stories and interact with reporters. I have written before about my disdain for comments that appear at the bottom of news stories. With that in mind, how can I utilize web design to create an intelligent, engaged community of readers? One thing I want employee number 2 to do is program software that would apply something like Microsoft Word’s tracked changes to a story. For example, let’s say you are reading this story about the Department of Water and Power. As you’re reading, you may have questions. With the system I want to design, you could highlight a portion of the article and write in your question, instead of leaving an angry or confused comment at the bottom of the story.

The comment would be sent to the reporter as an email. At a given time every day, the top 10 questions on a story would appear in a sidebar next to the story, along with answers from the reporter. This would provide greater depth to the story and show readers that their questions or concerns are heard and respected by the reporter.

I also plan for Project Goldfish to have a community page that is entirely separate from the news pages. Over at “The Watercooler,” I envision having video sessions with reporters talking about their latest stories. I would also like to have video interviews with newsmakers. I could see every Thursday evening being a web version of Andy Cohen’s “Watch What Happens Live!” Council members, union reps or members of neighborhood councils could come on to talk about the stories of the week, what they’re working on, and give their perspectives on what is happening at City Hall. Also, as you can see from the mockup below, there is a section called “Letter to the Editor.” Every day, my staff and I would pick one letter that is thoughtful and intelligent enough to be highlighted. And yes, the writer is identified through Facebook Connect. A newspaper wouldn’t publish a letter without verifying the writer’s identity; why would I?

I have plenty of ideas on what to create. Building those ideas, now that’s why I need employee number 2.

Money, Money, Money

I am at the point in my independent study where I am calculating what it would cost to start up and run Project Goldfish. I want to see if this is something that is feasible, economically. I have spent about two, three weeks now putting together a budget for the site, estimating rent, insurance and newspaper subscriptions. The cost to start Project Goldfish is roughly the same as a new Honda Accord. If I cut down on attorney’s fees, we’re basically looking at a Ford Focus.

As far as the cost to operate Project Goldfish, the greatest expense is my own salary. For the purposes of the budget, I’m choosing to pay myself more than I ever made as a reporter but, considering that I used to work for compliments and ulcers, that is not saying very much.

Still, I am combing through these numbers trying to find anything that can be cut. I am used to working for a lean operation. In my last job, all supply orders for the bureau had to be pre-approved. I understand. For all they knew, I was stockpiling reporters’ notebooks and selling them out of the trunk of my car for 25 cents a pop. Printer and fax cartridges? That’s big money. Then, there was the fateful day I accidently dumped an entire cup of coffee on my computer keyboard. For me, this was just another day, as I routinely spill coffee on myself, skirts, coats, desks, tote bags and the floor. The coffee short-circuited the keyboard. I figured this was a pretty essential piece of equipment for a breaking news organization, but the response from the home office was, can’t you just make due? Oh, sure. How about I make due by picking up the $14 tab for a new keyboard?

The point, though, is that I know how little it takes to produce good copy and get it out to an audience. I’ve already taken on the cost of domain registration and hosting services. I am designing the site myself, and hitting up friends and family for help when needed. With that in mind, I start playing the game of "Do I really need this?":

• Office furniture: A new desk and chair are needed if I hire a reporter and that person works out of the office. Do I expect my reporter to be sitting in my office or out in the field, conducting interviews and attending meetings? I’d be perfectly happy if my reporter made her office on the bar of The Redwood or tucked away in an anonymous Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

• An office for that furniture: There’s no reason why a home office wouldn’t work for Project Goldfish. I’m budgeting for the second bedroom of a two-bedroom apartment or bungalow. Ohh, how about a beach bungalow? As for a mailing address, there is the neighborhood UPS store where I can get a mailbox with a street address.

• Insurance: Honestly, this is where I could use some professional guidance because I have questions like this:

-- What is the extent of insurance coverage I need for a home office?

-- How much general liability insurance do I need if I have one or two employees?

-- Do I need to change my auto insurance if I use Lola for work purposes?

-- Do I need to provide some sort of auto insurance if I have an employee use her own car for work purposes? (Also, I think I’m required to reimburse for gas. Yes?)

The next step is calculating how I make money at this thing. I assume, at the moment, that the site will partially be ad-supported. What I am struggling with is whether to make part of the website subscription-based. I have been playing with the idea of creating a “pro subscription.” For example, maybe articles are free but copies of reports and ordinances, video footage and interactive elements are behind a paywall. As I’ve previously mentioned, I do think readers should have some skin in the game. However, I received an email from a survey participant who identified a problem with a paywall for such materials:

"I would not be willing to pay for exclusive online topics because you then have a poorer populace who remain uneducated on the behind-the-scenes activities in the headlines."

I completely agree. The point of Project Goldfish is to inform the public. Why would I create something that falls short of that mission?

Let's Be Social

Work on Project Goldfish is moving forward. This week I spent a considerable amount of time setting up social media accounts for the website. A Twitter account, Facebook page and YouTube channel now exist for Project Goldfish. Well, exist for the project under the project’s real name (so sneaky!).

One idea I had when thinking about the function of the Twitter account was to take a cue from The Chicago Tribune and the Col. Tribune avatar. Two years ago, a four-person team at The Tribune came up with the idea of creating this character to represent the newspaper’s social media presence. The name, Col. Tribune, was a nod to Col. Robert McCormick, the newspaper’s legendary owner who died in 1955. (He is also the namesake and financier of my scholarship so, thank you Col. McCormick.)

Bill Adee, editor of digital media at The Trib, describes this character in Nieman Reports:

“Meet 'The Colonel.' He’s a pretty dapper guy. In his early 50’s, he has worked for the Chicago Tribune and lived in the city his whole life—well, except for that stint in the Army Reserves. That’s how he earned his nickname. He started out as a copy boy in the newsroom, worked his way up, and now he’s Web ambassador for chicagotribune.com.”

Adee goes on to describe the Colonel’s favorite place to get a steak, his morning reading habits and even where he lives. Today, Col. Tribune has more than 857,000 followers on Twitter.

With that in mind, I am in the process of creating a character who will tweet for the Project Goldfish site. She is a reporter and a workaholic. She is tech-savvy but clings to old school journalistic values. Beyond that … it’s difficult for me to get creative and make up this person. At first I thought she would be a plain Jane, with a fat cat at home and half a turkey sandwich in her purse. On the weekends she and her boyfriend, an L.A. city firefighter, would go hiking through the canyons. I lived with that version for a while but ultimately decided that was too boring.

This character’s life is still in the process of being created, but her face and likeness are becoming a reality. An artist friend has put together sketches of what she will look like. The sketches are coming out great and it is exciting seeing my ideas become something tangible. Of course, characters and pictures are just one small part of social media. The heavy lifting is building an audience and leveraging that audience to improve content. This was the subject of a class I took last quarter, Building Networked Audiences.

Building Networked Audiences was the class that took an academic eye to social media. For example, Facebook is an undirected graph whereas Twitter is directed. Fascinating, right? We studied search engine optimization, link strategy and ways to determine the "influence" of Twitter and Digg.

Content is important, too. I think it is about being timely and relevant. I follow a certain number of news organizations on Twitter and I’m sure I will add a lot more when I return to reporting in another two or three months. However, the accounts that tweet "news" hours after the event are going to be eliminated. If I’ve already read a story on the Los Angeles Times’ website, what is the point in tweeting about it hours later? It’s not as if it’s breaking news at that point. NBC4 gave me a perfect example of this today. As I'm writing this, it’s about 3 p.m. The ESPY Awards took place last night. This is not timely:

So what is to become of the Project Goldfish avatar? What should she be like, and how will that help set the tone and culture of Project Goldfish?

Pants. Mustard.

Is Project Goldfish pants? Or mustard?

I'm sorry, what was that you said? Those two sentences don't make any sense? OK, let me start at the beginning. One of the many things I loved about Los Angeles was Indie 103.1 FM. The independent radio station (now R.I.P.) was an oasis in the sea of obnoxious DJs and bad music. My morning drive down Sunset Boulevard was usually accompanied by Joe Escalante, Vandals bassist turned attorney. He hosted The Last of the Famous International Morning Show, where director David Lynch was the weatherman and actor Timothy Olyphant did sports. It was all very charming.

That charm continued into the afternoon with Jonesy’s Jukebox. Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols hosted a funky, meandering and highly-entertaining program where he’d mumble about whatever, play music, interview guests and sometimes go ahead and answer his cell phone. Jonesy liked to play new singles for his guests in the studio, and then he would ask them if the song was pants or mustard.

Mustard meant good.

Pants meant bad.

As I’m working on this project, I constantly ask myself if this will be any good. What does "good" mean? What is the definition of success?

Yesterday, I sorted through survey results. The findings were interesting, but not groundbreaking. One of the questions on the survey asked:

Would you be willing to pay for articles on Los Angeles politics if they had information or exclusive interviews you could not find in another publication?

The result: 60 percent of respondents said NO.

Hmm. Philosophically, I think consumers should pay for news. It is not that good journalism is costly, but the idea that it's free has never sat well with me. After reading through survey results, however, it looks like counting subscriptions would not be a good benchmark of success. Nowadays, “free” is (always was?) a business model. Chris Anderson explores the concept in Free, a book that I highly recommend. Anderson explains the psychology of free in this way:

“Why do people think ‘free’ means diminished quality in one instance, and not in another? It turns out that our feelings about ‘free’ are relative, not absolute. If something used to cost money and now doesn’t, we tend to correlate that with a decline in quality. But if something never cost money, we don’t feel the same way. A free bagel is probably stale, but free ketchup in a restaurant is fine. Nobody thinks that Google is an inferior search engine because it doesn’t charge.”

I am one who has long considered price and quality to be intertwined. A news product with a subscription was probably mustard; free news was pants.

But let’s assume that Project Goldfish is quality journalism and it is free. From there I think there are two measures of success: 1) How many unique visitors stop by the website every month? 2) Do Project Goldfish stories motivate anyone to take action?

Unique visitors are the number of people who visit a site during a given period of time. This is in contrast to visits. The same user may return to your site every day – one unique visitor, many visits. Through the survey, participants told me they regularly visit LAist and CityWatchLA. I know most people in that sphere also visit Kevin Roderick's LAObserved, and Ron Kaye is working to build traffic on his website, which is typically commentary about ongoing political issues. To get a sense of their traffic, I plugged the sites into Compete. (Disclaimer: I am sure each site would say/does say these are low estimates. Compete estimates traffic but internal metrics almost always show greater numbers of visitors. Also, I used Compete here instead of Quantcast because some of the traffic was too low for Quantcast to even estimate.)

There’s obviously a range of traffic.

Traffic is one measure of influence. I think what happens after a story is published is also a good measure. If Project Goldfish has the traffic of CityWatchLA but produces stories that help capture a serial killer, expose dangers at hospitals or become Monday morning must-reads, I would absolutely consider the site to be a success. Mustard.

Building a Mystery

The process of turning what is now just a vision in my mind into a real product that attracts customers and generates revenue is taxing, to say the least. Project Goldfish has been swimming around in my mind for some time. I’ve lived with it, fallen asleep with it and discussed it with my family ad nauseum. This is what I wrote to Medill in May, 2009 when I was asked about my professional goals:

“Through my studies at Medill, I want to learn how to create and manage an online publication that uses the written word, pictures, audio and video from professional journalists – not eyewitnesses or “citizen journalists” – to tell the news of a very specific place or area of interest … Local politics is really the heart of any city because it encompasses crime, education, traffic, development and quality of life issues such as collecting trash and trimming the trees. I think it is key to create a product that becomes integral to the lives of readers. It must be a publication that provides quality information that is not already available through traditional newspapers and broadcast outlines.”

This summer is go-time. My energy is now spent on being as specific and realistic as possible. My “grandiose” plan for an office, a dozen reporters and high-end camera equipment created its own barrier to entry. A home office and two reporters? Much more manageable and much more realistic to start. I’m halfway through putting together the financial projections on what it would cost to start and maintain such a business. I have spent hours on the Web, researching local and state permits and taxes.

Domain name? Registered.

An attorney? The search is on.

My adviser for this independent study has provided a lot of useful and supportive advice. In the area of content, there are two things he has said that I find particularly helpful in making this project feasible, making it something others can envision along with me.

1. Distinguish between political reporting and governmental reporting.

I find the political coverage in Los Angeles to be highly entertaining. This business about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and whether he failed to report tens of thousands of dollars worth of tickets (Lakers, Dodgers, Academy Awards, concerts) as gifts? Yes, it’s a legitimate news story – both the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office and state Fair Political Practices Commission are investigating. But it’s also …. Just watch this video from FOX 11 and reporter John Schwada. The part where the reporters run up the stairs after the mayor? Unnecessary, silly and entertaining:

While every news outlet in Los Angeles covered the Villaraigosa story, these governmental stories happened:

· The head of the city Planning Department resigned

· The City Council changed water restrictions for residents

· DWP’s general manager declined to testify to allegations the utility tried to extort the city into approving a rate increase

· City council members approved a boycott of Arizona contractors, then approved an exemption for a company that operates red-light cameras in Los Angeles

Obviously some news outlets covered those stories (that’s how I know about the resignation, snub and votes) but the amount of ink spilled on Villaraigosa’s shenanigans compared to the actual business of the city? Unbalanced. Governmental reporting is a space Project Goldfish could dominate.

2. My adviser recommended I find news pieces that look like what Project Goldfish aspires to produce. This Los Angeles Times story – “L.A.’s Phantom Parking is a Jam for Incoming Bakery” – is a good starting point for what I would want my site to do.

Basically the piece looks at the challenge facing Magnolia Bakery, which is set to open on Third Street. The owner, a New Yorker, is used to foot-traffic coming to his store, but this is Los Angeles and things are done differently. (As an aside, can I just point out that this is about the worst location for Magnolia? I know they want to be somewhere hip and close to other restaurants and boutiques, but anyone who lives in L.A. knows how overcrowded and congested this entire area is. It’s a huge pain. Didn’t Abrams consult anyone before picking this location? Also, what is the Big Orange? Did SoCal get a new nickname?) The point of the story is that the city of Los Angeles requires restaurant owners to have a certain number of parking spots available to customers, and this is basically impossible at this location because it is already overpopulated with businesses and homes.

It’s a nice piece however, if it were a Project Goldfish story, the narrative would have taken a turn to this: If the mayor and Los Angeles City Council want Los Angeles to be transit-oriented and are going to continue to push Angelenos to take the bus, light rail, bicycle or – OMG! – walk, then why is there a requirement that businesses provide parking spaces? Doesn’t that just encourage people to continue driving?

I always say the best things in life are equal parts awesome and terrifying. Project Goldfish is fitting that to a T.

Supply and Demand

I took a media management class at Kellogg last winter. It was an opportunity for journalism students to learn something about business and for business students to have an understanding of media. It was always very frustrating to hear my classmates argue that managing a newspaper or magazine is no different than managing a widget-producing factory. Media is different. The value of the product is tied up in the knowledge and relationships possessed by writers. Reporters have different styles, strengths and weaknesses. It is not possible to swap out one beat writer for another and expect to have an identical product. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that media is a public good.

However, there was one “business-minded” attitude that I did agree with. Entrepreneurs must be willing to change their vision in order to make it viable. There is a danger in becoming married to an idea, and ultimately inflexible to market demand. I have to frequently remind myself of this truth as I work on Project Goldfish. I am trying to find the balance between the essence of my vision – objectivity, truth, transparency – and the needs or wants of consumers.

For that reason, this week I started to prepare for my market analysis by sending out surveys to people with professional and personal ties to City Hall. I seriously underestimated how long it would take to send 150 emails but I know I need to cast a wide net if I want good feedback. And the 150 may just be a start … there are more businesses to contact, more reporters, more community activists.

I’m curious and anxious to see the results of the survey. I asked participants to complete the questionnaire by next Friday. At that point, Survey Monkey gets to do the heavy lifting and tell me what to do next. Right? Isn’t that how it works?

Part of this project is also to determine who the consumer is, and I don’t just mean demographic or psychographic statistics. Take a look at what Hulu says in their mission statement:

“Hulu's mission is to help people find and enjoy the world's premium video content when, where and how they want it. As we pursue this mission, we aspire to create a service that users, advertisers, and content owners unabashedly love.”

Hulu’s consumers are the users who watch television programs and movies on the site, the networks that provide the content, and the advertisers who market their products on Hulu.com. This is a very different attitude than those of newspaper managers, who would surely say their customer is the person who reads the paper; advertisers are “merely” the ones who pay to keep the company afloat. Project Goldfish’s customer will be the person who reads the site and utilizes the community aspects but I could foresee advertisers also being considered consumers, if the site is ad-supported.

Medill teaches us to be customer-centric. Listen to the audience. Engage with the audience. Give them what they want, to a point. The Chicago News Cooperative is an exciting project in Chicago that is experiencing the downside of being too customer-centric. CNC caught a break when it hooked up with The New York Times to provide local coverage that would appear in the Midwest edition of the paper. The problem is that, with The Times writing the checks, they also get to call the shots on what stories they want. It has changed the nature of what the news coop covers and how it allocates its resources.

Week Four is market analysis. I’ll be reviewing the results of the survey, in addition to looking at the media landscape in Los Angeles. Most importantly, I’ll be figuring out how Project Goldfish can be the disruptive innovation to take over the scene.

Make It Rain

I anticipate the greatest challenge of Project Goldfish will be finding a way to make it profitable. Obviously that’s the challenge of any business but it is especially true in journalism, a field that has for far too long relied on advertisers. Consumers, whether subscribers or newsstand readers, never paid the bills for newspaper companies. It is the fault of media management that readers were conditioned to pay as little as 50 cents for a wealth of news, sports, comics, horoscopes and coupons.

I never understood why it took – and continues to take – newspapers so long to catch up with the digital age. Aside from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, newspapers have failed to enhance news coverage through their news sites and, aside, from the WSJ, almost all have failed to monetize content in any real way. In the fall quarter, I had a professor point out that it was difficult for traditional media companies to drop what they were doing and move their operations to the Web because of sunk costs and existing infrastructure, such as printing presses. When there are millions of dollars and hundreds of employees invested in a production plant, it is difficult to switch courses.

Then there is debt. The Tribune Company is in bankruptcy. It seems there are weekly updates on plans to pay creditors, pay bonuses and cut costs. At the same time, the company is profitable. Yes, the Chicago Tribuneand Los Angeles Times make money. They just don’t make enough money to keep up with the debt payments.

The good news for Project Goldfish is that it doesn’t come with any of that baggage. I’m starting from scratch, without debt and very little overhead. I’m starting from a place where the answer to every question is: “There’s no money for that.” This philosophy will force me to decide what is a need and what is a want. It will also force me to get creative. Perez Hilton’s office was a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. He may be onto something.

In “Clues in the Rubble: A User-First Framework for Sustaining Local News,” Bill Mitchell lists a variety of funding and payment options. They are:

Advertising: Behavioral Targeting; Advertisers as information-providers

User Fees: Memberships; Metered use

Foundation Help: News Services; Direct Subsidies

Government Help: Policy Changes; Direct Subsidies

Crowdsourcing: Donations; Story-funding

Partnerships: with Competitors; Users; Government; Foundations; Universities

Related Businesses: iPhone apps; Books; Info services; Events

Mitchell quotes the 2008 State of the News Media study from the Pew Research Center as saying consumers “still care about such traditional journalism values as accuracy, fairness and independence.” Well, that’s good; at least we haven’t lost everything. What I think this shows, however, is that our financial decisions should remain aligned with these values. “Independence” seems the most likely to be jeopardized. This is why the suggestion of government intervention continues to be, in my opinion, a terrible suggestion and one I hope never comes to fruition. If the “media elite” are already accused of being biased (left or right), just imagine what would happen if there were given direct government subsidies. Actually, look at what people say about PBS and NPR. Both are fine news organizations that are dinged for real or perceived political bias.

The first order of business is to determine what it would cost to start Project Goldfish. Then, what would it cost to maintain the business on an ongoing basis? Only after I’ve answered those two questions can I tackle the equation that will keep Project Goldfish online.

This Is How It Starts

I am finally – officially – starting work on an idea that has been brewing in my mind for more than a year. A good 60 percent of my life, time and brainpower are spent on journalism – reading it, writing it, thinking about it, criticizing it and praising it when appropriate. Prior to returning to school, I worked as a reporter for a wire service in Los Angeles. I mainly covered county and city politics during my four years there, although there was the occasional Academy Awards ceremony and celebutante DUI case. I sat through countless committee meetings, council meetings and news conferences. I read thick reports on LAPD misconduct, listened to angry transit riders protest MTA fare increases, and watched Betty White and Bob Barker duke it out over the treatment of an elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo. It was great.

But the times they are a changin’ in the field of journalism. It is not enough to write a story. Reporters need to think of ways to improve their stories through videos and online elements. The Internet provides instant feedback on stories, often in the form of lame comments at the end of stories. But the possibilities! What if someone could break down the mental and design barriers of putting newspapers on the Web? What if we could completely redesign the appearance, flow and usability of news sites? There are all sorts of online communities; why can’t there be a news community that does not descend into partisan, vitriolic madness?

These thoughts led to the birth of what I’ll refer to as Project Goldfish. It is my independent study project for the summer and something that I hope can become a reality in the not-so-distant future. I know that for some students, independent study is a breeze – there’s no class to attend, you write your own syllabus, and you even get to decide how you’re graded. Easy, right? Not if you're a crazy person ... like me. There are three parts to my study:

-- A business plan that includes a:

Positioning statement

Company description

Organizational and management structure

Market analysis

Financials

-- Project prototype with:

Photoshop mockups

Website

-- Blog:

Two blogs per week

Yes, writing this post is an assignment! I will also be reading:

We the Media by Dan Gillmor

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Newsonomics by Ken Doctor

Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel

And any other books or articles suggested by my advisor.

I had two offices when I worked as a reporter. The first was in the L.A. County Hall of Administration. It had lime green walls, metal furniture and a front row seat to a bird’s nest, which was fairly X-rated in the springtime. My second office was messy, comfortable and provided access to the mayor’s private elevator. To go from that to a classroom, surrounded by 24-year-olds checking Facebook and GChat during lecture was a major shift – much more so than I anticipated. This summer I am back in an office of sorts. I have desk space in the journalism school. For me, it’s easier to stay on task when there’s not a television or window with a view nearby. Check out the sweet setup:

This project is going to be challenging, exciting and fun. As I get things underway, I imagine this blog will be a reflection of what I’m reading and how it applies to Project Goldfish. It will also be a way to see how the project changes and evolves over the next 10 weeks. I can’t wait.