David Cohn, Spot Us Founder and News Challenge winner from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

In the past two parts of my series, I have examined the organizational structure of a newspaper (the Bucknellian) and the problems facing the industry. In short, the newspaper industry is losing readers to the internet, while its print advertising revenues are decreasing quickly. In order to survive, the newspaper industry is going to have to change.

Go Non-Profit

Interestingly enough, some newspapers (albeit, the small ones) are working to become non-profit organizations. As a non-profit, a newspaper would have some clear advantages. First, a non-profit can receive donations and support from philanthropic organizations that would be tax-deductible, tapping a totally new income stream. This model has been successful for other types of media, especially National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

MinnPost

One organization that is currently following the non-profit model is MinnPost.  Started by Joel Kramer, MinnPost is a non-profit newspaper that operates an online newspaper that focuses on the Minneapolis area as well as national news.  It started up with financial support from donors and foundations and hopes to break even using a mix of memberships, advertising, and sponsorships. According to Kramer, MinnPost should be able to breakeven before 2012. From a content perspective, MinnPost publishes many “short quick hits” types of stories to draw in readers. Even though it still publishes long stories with in depth reporting, the shorter stories have been bringing more traffic to the site. It also allows readers to comment on articles, giving readers a way to feel connected to the news source as well as reason to come back more often. The site is also cutting edge when it comes to Web 2.0 features as the site posts links to other sites in the form of affiliates. Affiliates host a link to MinnPost and Minnpost will return the favor.

To make money, the site does have Google Ad Sense ads on its site as well as traditional ads. MinnPost also has started selling sponsorships for certain sections of its online page, which according to Kramer, bring more exposure to the advertisers. The newspaper (if you can call it that) also sells memberships to satisfied customers. There seems to be little incentive for making a donation, besides a tax exemption and a shout out on their site, but from a quick look at its donor list, MinnPost has received a generous amount of donations. It will be interesting to watch MinnPost in the future to gauge its success.

ProPublica

Similarly to MinnPost, is ProPublica. ProPublica is another non-profit newspaper but only receives its financial backing from large foundations, such as the Sandler foundation. Its main purpose is to do investigative reporting, which is a very costly affair and is one of the first things to get cut from a failing newspaper. Investigative reporting has made a huge impact on the American society and has held people accountable for their actions all over the nation, such as the Watergate scandal.  ProPublica is run by some very experienced people including the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, the former managing editor of the Oregonian, and the former investigative editor of The New York Times.  ProPublica gives its most important stories to traditional news sources for free and then will later post it on their website. ProPublica has broken some large stories including about a story about the medical personnel involvement in interrogations in Iraq. The story then started a congressional review.

Spot.Us

Another interesting newspaper company is called Spot.Us. Spot.US is basically the Kiva of the newspaper world. Funded by the Knight Foundation, Spot.US connects journalists with the public, similarly to the way that Kiva connects lenders to people in the developing nations. People can go to Spot.Us and submit tips, or stories that they want to have investigated. A reporter will then accept the story and set a fee. Other people can donate money (tax deductible) to have that story written. The story can be picked up by any other news source for free, but if an organization wants exclusive rights, they have to pay 50% of the donor fee back to Spot.Us. Some of that money goes back to the original donors as credits to fund another story. Right now, Spot.Us is focused on the Bay Area and has plans to launch in other cities in the United States. Here is a video explaining the concept. 

As intriguing as Spot.Us is, I do not feel this model will become the archetype of newspapers in the future. I think it can be successful for local areas where people are curious about the issues around them but I do not feel it would be capable of handling large-scale investigative reporting, especially concerning international politics.  Of the three organizations that I profiled, I feel that the Minnpost and ProPublica will become the role models in the newspaper industry. Newspapers cannot expect to turn a profit in the future with the current revenue models that they have in place. They cannot produce a good product without substantial capital investment, which the stock market will not provide to a hurting industry. At the same time, the newspaper industry should not receive government bailout money as it could possible interfere with its objectivity. Instead, most modern newspapers, especially those in financial trouble should restructure as a non-profit organization. This would give them the necessary tax breaks and the ability to receive donations from the public. Modern newspapers need to offer a connection between the news and its readers, like Minnpost has been trying to do. They need to accept the internet and embrace it.

Protecting Democracy

Why do we even need newspapers? Vince Stehle of the Chronicle of Philanthropy sums it up pretty well, “Who cares if newspapers do go out of business? We all should. Newspapers are the first draft of history, and they provide a critical check on the abuse of power by political and corporate interests. A healthy democracy and a just society depend upon a free and vigorous press.” Newspapers keep people accountable and society will always need this important service.  

Here ends my three part series on the newspaper industry. Feel free to comment below.  Part One.  Part Two.

PANEL: Diverse Business Models in Online Journalism – Are We Trying Hard Enough?

The question Steve Outing addressed first was, like the panel’s title, are we trying hard enough? He said that at first the answer is no. Concerned about the direction things are going, he referenced Walter Isaacson’s front-page story on Time about the future of newspapers, which argues in favor of charging for online content.

Yet Outing argues that charging for online content is harder for smaller, community newspapers one in Denver than for larger newspapers like The Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. He mentioned that general buzz is that the model will be charging for online content.

Cautious about not being too negative, Outing referenced that small, local newspapers will live longer than larger, metro papers. Print newspapers don’t have to survive as long the as institution does, said Outing. He also believes in the idea of getting your content everywhere, through every media and through partnerships among media outlets. Though newspapers haven’t tried the agency model, becoming the agency for your community, and getting advertisers from that. The idea of having a content wall is outdated.

So who will be the successor of newspapers? INDenverTimes for example charges $4.99 a month. One really innovative thing they’re offering is that the user also gets the right to talk to their journalists, in a form of an open chat. He also highlighted the San Diego News Network, which developed a model of partnering to whichever outlet they could. So this becomes an ad-revenue, content-sharing model. As part of the deal, everybody has to promote each other. He also mentioned Huffington Post, The Batavian and Spot.us.

To conclude, Outing said that there should be an increased cooperation with Google, for example through Google News. People commonly hate the idea, he said, yet he was surprised at the animosity from the traditional press.

David Cohn: Defining the Digital Generation's Concept of Local News?

“Journalism will survive the death of its institutions,” argues David Cohn in a post on the site digitaljournal.com.

Speaking at a forum in Toronto on the “Future of News,” Cohn, the founder of a citizen media startup called Spot.us clearly threw his chips in with the “something other than what we’ve got” crowd.  Cohn argues that institutions like television stations don’t make someone a journalist.  He says anyone’s got that right, and more and more, people will play that role. “Reporters today can make their own credentials.”

Cohn believes that the top-down institutions we grew up with are going away, and bottom-up journalism will replace it.  Where the money figures in–that’s the unanswered question, and Cohn suggests a LOT of trial and error before it’s fully figured out.  ”There are some things the public does better than journalists, and vice versa. It’s important for citizen journalism sites to figure out what can be done exceptionally with participatory journalism.”

I contacted Cohn and asked him specifically about local TV news, and whether it’s more or less likely to survive than the local paper, as both push forward websites and web-only content, and try to expand on a model that’s made money for decades…until it all fell apart.  Since many, if not most of us, still work for these companies, and grew up on the old financial models (car company buys ads, ads make station money and pay for newscast, sponsored newscast needs reporters, station hires reporters, producers, photographers, etc.) Cohn’s answer may come as a dash of ice cold water.

“Local TV stations are even more screwed than newspapers,” he told me.  ”They just don’t know it yet.”  Cohn says with every passing moment, the relevance of the 6 o’clock newscast fades for more and more people. People still want to know what’s happening in their town, but they won’t wait for Chuck and Sue at 6 to tell ‘em what happened.  And as stations push viewers to the web for “more,” Cohn’s just not impressed.  ”Their websites are absolutely atrocious for the most part.”

vidSF: Doing Local News, Just Not the Way You Do

What might the future look like if Cohn’s right, and stations are “screwed”?  Well, forget the networks, they’re bound for cable and Hulu.  Your 2.0 local news might resemble vidSF, a local website in San Francisco whose very mission statement is that your Dad’s local news is dead:  ”We were inspired to start VidSF when we noticed our peers were no longer watching local TV news. Its style continues to stagnate, and its content is no longer relevant to our daily lives.”

Hey, before you soil yourself, remember this:  your boss is probably way more clueless about this than you are, and hopefully he or she won’t check out vidSF before your contract comes up.

The week’s highlights from the freelance and digital news biz:

It was a week for debating whether Google and the Internet have hurt or helped newspapers.

• Search engine guru and ex-newspaper reporter Danny Sullivan doesn’t understand newspapers’ anti-Google stance.
• But a poll of 43 mainstream media insiders conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal reveals 65 percent feel the Internet has hurt journalism while 34 percent say it’s helped.

Meanwhile, new forms of online journalism are getting more notice:

• Buzz Woolley, founder Voice of San Diego, the online reporting site, reports being inundated with requests from people wanting to know how they do what they do.
• In the same panel discussion, held at the recent Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley and reported by PBS MediaShift’s Mark Glaser, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Robert Rosenthan says collaboration “is going to be very important for profit and nonprofit journalism.”
• ReadWriteWeb interviews David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, the journalism marketplace that lets readers decide what they want to pay to get a story written, on the future of journalism.

A just-launched Online News Association fundraising campaign nets $2,300, enough to offer 31 free memberships. Details at www.Journalists.org.

CBS’ Interactive division launches personal finance and career sites, MoneyWatch.com.

Forbes says it will launch ForbesWoman on May 11. Moira Forbes, daughter of Steve and granddaughter of Malcolm, will serve as publisher of the quarterly print magazine and related Website, which will be sent to Forbes’ 125,000 women suscribers.

News agencies report Iran has formally charged US-Iranian freelance broadcast journalist Roxana Saberi with spying.

The week’s new Twitter tools:

• A geographical directory called LocalTweeps.com. Find me in 97221.
• A collection of WordPress Twitter plugins.

UPDATED: Last but definitely not least – The Freelance Writer’s Helper is a fantastic everything-you-need-to-know about freelancing wiki guide written by long-time Motley Fool freelancer Tim Beyers. The guide’s a list of agents, associations, blogging services, contests, freelancers and other resources that Beyers updates on a regular basis. In case you don’t know him, Beyers is @milehighfool on Twitter and co-host of the popular #editorchat online chat session for editors and freelancers that runs Wednesdays on Twitter.

David Cohn’s Spot.us is an experiment “to preserve investigative journalism” in the San Francisco bay area. 

This is how it works. Members of the public choose which topic should be investigated by a journalist, pledging anything from $5 upwards. 

Listen to how David sees his idea taking off and his plea that journalism will only survive if others are as experimental. 

David’s Twitter handle is @Digidave, here are his Shares, which I have written about before, and he writes a blog DigiDave.

This is my fourth interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Con los medios de comunicación está pasando un poco como con la música. A pesar de que se puedan conseguir noticias y canciones gratuitamente, no ha desparecido la música ni el periodismo.  Lo que sí está en crisis son los modelos de negocio tradicionales afectados por la inadaptación a internet, pero la gente nunca ha ido a más conciertos ni ha consumido tantos contenidos como ahora.

En los últimos tiempos los medios tradicionales han perdido credibilidad e ingresos, mientras que vemos  continuamente surgir nuevos canales y actores en el panorama informativo.

Estamos ante un cambio de paradigma, los medios navegan por aguas turbulentas, unos se hunden y otros nacen y absolutamente nadie sabe quien tendrá éxito a largo plazo.

En el caso del periodismo, ya no hace falta comprar un periódico para enterarse de una exclusiva, pues cualquier noticia de interés es replicada, analizada, puesta en contexto y hasta enriquecida con información extra y comentarios de los lectores… en internet. Hoy no hace falta comprarse el periódico para estar bien informado, basta con tener acceso a una conexión a internet.

Otro gran cambio ha sido la ruptura de monopolio para producir noticias y análisis. Ahora  cualquiera puede producir noticias y comentarios sin tener que dedicarse profesionalmente a ello por un coste cero, tanto para el emisor como para el receptor.

¿Significa esto que los grandes medios son prescindibles?

No, en absoluto. ¿Quién ha cubierto los últimos grandes acontecimientos? Las grandes agencias y medios de siempre. Ellos son quienes tienen dinero para mandar a corresponsales, mandar crónicas instantáneas vía satélite y estar procesando la actualidad 24 horas. También son a ellos a quienes invitan a las ruedas de prensa. Así que se podría decir que las fuentes primarias siguen siendo las mismas-

También son los grandes medios los que deciden qué es noticia y qué no lo es, lo que supone una enorme influencia en la opinión pública de los ciudadanos.

Las únicas novedades en este sentido, han sido Al-Jazzera, y Telesur, que buscan interpretar la realidad desde la sensibilidad árabe y latinoamericana respectivamente, compitiendo directamente con CNN, FOX, BBC, TVE, Deutsche Welle etc.

Nada sustituye a los grandes grupos de comunicación aunque, según parece, hay hueco para algunos nuevos.

En el debate del futuro de los medios, se obvia el poder que significa la capacidad de formar la opinión pública. Por mucho que bajen los ingresos publicitarios y las ventas de ejemplares en el caso de la prensa, el poder de informar es tan valioso que no sería difícil encontrar grupos empresariales o políticos que lo hicieran perdiendo dinero.

Pongamos por ejemplo a Tele Sur, un grupo de medios creado con el apoyo de varios gobiernos hispanoamericanos que no nació para ganar dinero, sino para “contrapesar la visión distorsionada de la realidad latinoamericana por las televisoras foráneas”.

Sin embargo por mucho que los grandes grupos de comunicación tengan millones de espectadores, lectores y oyentes, no quiere decir que éstos los crean a pies juntillas. La gente ya no se cree todo lo que sale en la tele, es más crítica y se apoya cada vez más en análisis producidos descentralizadamente y sin vínculos con el poder.

Algunos apuntan acertadamente que la falta de ingresos de los periódicos han limitado el dinero que se destina al periodismo de investigación, pues no hay dinero para mantener a periodistas que durante semanas escarben en la basura (literal y metafóricamente) para lograr sacar a la luz un “Watergate”. ¿Habrá desaparecido el periodista aguerrido que encarnó Clint Eastwood en Ejecución Inminente? En la película seguía sus corazonadas para demostrar la inocencia de un condenado a muerte.

De todas formas nuevos modelos informativos están retando al oligopolio de la producción de noticias primarias. Esto sucede sobre todo a nivel local (periodismo ciudadano) y a nivel especializado, ámbitos en los que es menos costoso crear contenidos. Prueba de ello es el original modelo propuesto por Spot.us, en el que la comunidad local financia diversos reportajes para que sean llevados a cabo.

Menéame.net es un agregador que se nutre de las noticias que sugieren los usuarios, filtrando sólo las más relevantes para éstos. Compiladores de noticias como éstos, están teniendo una discreta pero creciente influencia entre los periodistas y guionistas más jóvenes. Incluso parece que los temas importantes en  Menéame  (los abusos de la SGAE por ejemplo) pueden hacerse un huevo entre las prioridades de los medios más grandes.

O tal vez el futuro pase por establecer un canal que permita los micropagos. ¿quién no pagaría unos céntimos por leer tu columna favorita… si fuera tan fácil como hacer un clic?

O quizás, la solución para de la rentabilidad es que, después de marear mucho la perdiz, simplemente no hay rentabilidad posible. Así los medios estarían más allá de la cuenta de resultados y podrían funcionar tan sólo con apoyo de individuos, fundaciones, empresas o gobiernos. Cada vez hay más ejemplos y tienen cada vez más lectores.

Como conclusión podemos afirmar que los periodistas deben ahora reconocer el poder de los lectores, que tienen los medios para corregirles, contradecirles y exigirles sobre qué y cómo quieren que trabajen.

(artículo publicado en Soitu)

I’ve been neglecting this site for a while, so I thought I’d update anyone who happens to drop by with some details about what projects have been keeping me busy.

Yesterday was Earth2Tech’s first conference, Green:Net, here in San Francisco. I moderated a panel on software, with Jeremy Jaech, the CEO of Verdiem; Richard Barber, the CTO of CarbonFlow; Jonathan Gay, founder of Greenbox; Raffi Krikorian, co-founder of Wattzon; and Alex Wissner-Gross, founder of CO2 Stats. I’ll also did some short video interviews with speakers, including folks from Dell, Cisco, GE, IBM and Microsoft. They’ll be up on the Earth2Tech site soon — I’ll post links when they’re available.

I also recently completed two feature articles. One, inspired by my experience with the “greening of Green:Net,” was for MPI’s ONE+ magazine; it’s a piece on alternatives to standard carbon offsets for events. It takes a look at how some event planners are reinvesting the money they could have spent on carbon offsets in other ways: local projects, deep carbon accounting, and more. The other, out this month from Sustainable Industries, looks at new business models in the recycling industry. (Get a sneak peek here!)

And finally, the Spot.Us story on solar power in the Bay Area that I helped edit also got some good news this month: On Earth magazine is going to publish the story and refund the original donors. I met with Dave Cohn just before that happened to talk about the Spot.Us project, and I’m really looking forward to being involved in the project going forward. While it’s a bad time for the media business, it’s a pretty exciting time for media on the content side — there’s a lot of opportunity to experiment and explore.

Spot.us is an organization in the S.F. Bay area.  Very close citizen journalism of years past.

Perhaps a puzzle piece to the big picture of tomorrows media or maybe just another nothing.

Crowd-funded journalism site Spot.Us has published my story on Muni’s express bus service!

For years, a lack of information left Muni in the dark about what it was doing well, what it had to improve and what its riders actually needed. But a proposed shuffling of resources following the Transit Effectiveness Project, a massive systemwide study, would add more frequent service and extend routes on some express lines serving city commuters. …

Julie Kirschbaum, manager of Muni’s Transit Effectiveness Project, says there also are other reasons why Muni doesn’t run more expresses. One is that although they might seem to be highly efficient – buses fill to capacity and swiftly transport full loads of passengers all the way across town with a minimum number of stops – there are some hidden costs to express service. …

Shrinking transit funding from the State of California and the City of San Francisco – as well as the federal government’s preference for funding buildings and equipment, rather than operating costs – will have an effect on Muni, including potential hits to vehicle maintenance, which would reduce Muni’s reliability systemwide.

And budget problems will have an impact on the TEP. “We do expect the budget challenges to slow the implementation of the TEP,” says Muni spokesman Judson True.

In 2008, an idea emerged to charge riders who pay cash fares an extra dollar to board express buses, but the proposal petered out. True said there’s still a chance the SFMTA might decide to pursue an express-bus surcharge again.

“Once an idea is out there it never really goes away. … It’s still out there as an idea,” said True.

In fact, the SFMTA Board is scheduled to discuss its budget for the coming fiscal year at a meeting Tuesday morning, March 17 — including the possibility of raising express cash fares. According to documents prepared for the meeting, Muni could gather an additional $1.4 million by raising the fare for all cash-paying express riders by $1.

Either way, because the TEP is focused on ways of doing business and on redirecting existing resources, Kirschbaum says she thinks the TEP’s recommendations for improved express service will remain largely intact: “Because the TEP service plans are resource-neutral, we’re still looking forward to implementing the TEP route proposals.”

I’ll post the rest of it here soon, but in the meantime please see the story by visiting http://spot.us/stories/76.

In related news, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency meets Tuesday to discuss its budget for the coming fiscal year, including the idea of charging some riders an extra dollar to board express buses. The SFMTA meets at 2 p.m. in Room 400, San Francisco City Hall.

While you’re at Spot.Us, be sure to check out the other stories and ideas there. Spot.Us has brought to light some good old-fashioned journalism, using new methods of publication and funding.

Would you pay an extra dollar to ride a Muni express bus? If you pay a cash fare you might have to do just that, under an idea being considered to help offset big cuts to the transit agency’s funding.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is scheduled to discuss its budget for fiscal year 2010 at a meeting 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, and one of the ideas covered in a presentation prepared for the meeting is to charge cash-paying express riders an extra buck: “Currently approximately 25,700 passengers ride the express routes daily. Assuming that 20% pay cash fares, increasing the cash fare by $1.00 over regular cash fare” would yield about $1.4 million for Muni.

If the SFMTA Board likes the idea, it would present the proposal — and any other potential changes to fares — at public meetings in April, according to documents prepared for Tuesday’s meeting.

In a related development, on March 10 I filed my long-time-coming article on Muni express service with crowd-funded journalism site Spot.Us. Spot.Us tells me they anticipate either publishing the article themselves or reaching an agreement on selling the piece very soon, perhaps even before Tuesday’s SFMTA meeting.

I spoke with Muni spokesman Judson True and Transit Effectiveness Project manager Julie Kirschbaum for my story, and I asked them about the idea of charging express riders a premium on top of the regular fare — something that came up in 2008 but didn’t go anywhere. True told me at the time that although the idea was still out there, he didn’t know that anyone in Muni was considering it actively, but it looks like changes to Muni’s revenue and spending projections changed that pretty quickly.

More information on Tuesday’s SFMTA meeting, including an agenda.

A PDF of the presentation on Muni’s fiscal year 2010 budget.

Watch a stream of the SFMTA meeting live on SFGTV2.

A few months back The New York Times blog Freakonomics asked a handful of people what they would do if they lost everything.  Their glib self-assurance that they would weather adversity with gritty aplomb and “some sort of basic shelter, like a bed of sweet-smelling straw”  just might help explain how we got in this financial mess to begin with.  Just like the AIG guys who sold trillions in Credit Default Swap “insurance” fully believing they’d never have to pay a claim, the professionals polled by Freakonomics  didn’t believe circumstances would dare thwart their ever upward progress.

It makes you wonder if they’ve read the grim news of mass layoffs, mounting home foreclosures and bankruptcies happening to people who also considered themselves too clever to fail.  However, given that newspapers are going out of business faster than the banks (would if we weren’t bailing them out), journalists themselves have had to do some boot-strap pulling up in order to tell the story of the sorry state of our world.

One intrepid radio journalist, Thea Chroman, went straight to her potential audience, asking them to chip in $550 to fund her reporting on life in a  San Francisco homeless shelter and Fresno’s burgeoning shanty towns.  The result is the two part series  Homeless in California and The new Hoovervilles in California’s central valley (with photos by David Torch).

The  project was done in collaboration with and aired on KALW and Roxbury News, but they only paid for half of the story.  The rest of the funding came from donations made by members of the public who saw Chroman’s pitch on  Spot.us,  a nonprofit project described by it’s founder David Cohn as  “an open source project, to pioneer community funded reporting.”

” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.”

Will crowd-funding become the new new journalism? Right now San Franciscans are acting as Beta testers, but it’s worth checking out  for reporters and citizens alike who are concerned that there won’t be any journalism–especially of the local news–unless some new deal  is found to fund it.

Jay Rosen pointed out another story regarding the newspaper situation in San Francisco. A commentary by Debra J. Saunders on the San Francisco Chronicle’s web site (SFGate.com) warns of a shallow news future in an online-only world.

And I hear this from people who say they care about news. They look to the site-rich Internet for salvation, unaware that the decline of newspapers means that those shiny new Web sites are linking to fewer real news stories. What looks like more choice isn’t. It’s more doors leading to fewer rooms.

When a newspaper dies, you don’t get a comprehensive periodical to fill the void. You get an informational vacant lot into which passers-by can throw their junk.

I can see where she’s going and I like her description. BUT, I think she fails to give credit to evolution. Was the first pamphlet comprehensive? No. Was the first newspaper? And so on…you get the idea. As new media technology grows and changes, so will the new media professional. Where are all the unemployed journalists going to go? Online, right? And they are going to take their contacts with them. You don’t have to be employed by a media company to call someone up and conduct an interview. It used to help, but the rules of engagement have changed and comprehensive reporting can take place online. It’s being done. Spot.Us is a good example. Readers act as the assignment editors, so if you don’t like what you see, you suggest something else and help fund it.

In a couple of weeks, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is due to stop publishing its print edition. In the spirit of prodding journalists to move on with life, and concentrate on re-energizing journalism in our communities, here’s some unsolicited advice for the Seattle Times. This could be an opportunity for the news organization to take its freedom and run with it…into survival and eventual success. Instead of spending its last dime doing business as usual, it could start a major overhaul that would create a different and modern Web-based nichified news organization with a solid local foundation.

A House that Jurnos and the Community Build

First, create geographic-based community sites: Put a pod of jurnos in each of the neighborhoods of Seattle that have a population of about 50,000 people, give or take a few thou. Each pod includes at least two reporters, an ad salesperson, and a community manager. (Take the U.S. News & World Report approach.)

Second, topic-based sites: Choose the beats you still own. Education? Transportation? Environment? Health? Rename them something catchier (for transportation, how does CantGetThereFromHere.com sound? Hey…I’ve been to Seattle.) And create another pod of jurnos for each of those sites. Reporters, ad salesperson, community manager.

Here's a rough graphic representation of the mini-metro network. Sumopaint's terrific online software, but it can't improve bad art skills. I'll ask my friend and graphics expert Val to fix it up, after folks send in some ideas on how to improve it.

Do a serious competitive analysis of these topic-based beats. Do you still own sports? Or have MaxPreps, the professional leagues, and CBS Sportline swooped in, as they have in almost every other metropolitan area? Has ESPN put Seattle on its list of local sites they’re developing? What about entertainment? Many national organizations glommed onto the local movie scene long ago, including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB.com. But maybe there’s enough local entertainment to keep a site alive. If a strong competitive topic-based site exists that has incorporated social networking, that serves its community members by giving them myriad ways to interact and provide useful information to each other…and many do, and that provides useful information, not just stories, move on to another topic.

Tango into the Webworld Format

Take the Web approach to create a social/news/information network. It’s so much more than a Web site. This must be a place the community thinks it owns. Remember the words “my newspaper”? Now you hear “my Facebook page”. You want people to think that way about this network. You want them to use it so much that they can’t figure out how they lived without it. (Talk to iPhone fanatics for inspiration. See how people use Craftster or Marketwatch and the Marketwatch Community.)

Map the communities. Find all relevant people and organizations that move and shake in a geographic-based community, or who push or put the brakes on issues in topic-based communities. Find out how the community works, how it communicates, what they need, what they want fixed. All that information gets organized into a Web shell of useful and user-friendly databases, resources, links, maps, etc. You don’t have to complete it before launch. Leave some for the community to add to and finish up.

Then, set up the site. Make the community the visual and functional engine. That means the site is a social network first. Big and prominent on the site is an easy sign-up. Free of charge. People have their own blogs, they form groups, they have discussions, they plan events, they buy and sell, give away and pick up, volunteer and ask for help. Anyone can look at anything on the site for free. People have to provide a real email address and their name if they want to participate. Their membership photos are on the home page. So are their blogs, links to their groups and their discussions.

The daily job of jurnos is to blog their beats. They post in a Webcentric way — some combination of text, still photos, videos, slide shows, graphics, polls, quizzes — a half-dozen or more times a day. They engage in a conversation with the community, which feeds them information (text, still photos, videos, slide shows, graphics). They ask this question about everything they put on the site: Is it immediate or contextual? Does it pick up or offer a chronological thread? Is it solution-oriented? How can I make this more participatory? Is this something that other communities would be interested in?

Sometimes jurnos do “traditional” iconic storytelling: a multi-part profile or analysis or summary.

The role of the jurno still fulfills important traditions passed down to us from the U.S. Constitution. We are fact-checkers, watchdogs, myth-busters, investigative reporters. Some people worry that if newspapers as we know them disappear, investigative reporting is doomed. In this network structure, I think investigative reporting thrives. In this structure, jurnos are much more involved in their communities, so problems are likely to be noticed sooner and followed more regularly. This approach has a better shot at preventing abuse. The other advantage is that jurnos can ask the community for input as they work on issues of individual or spot corruption or abuse, as TalkingPointsMemo did with the U.S. attorneys scandal.

What’s more important, though, is that with this structure, jurnos have a better shot at addressing issues of a corrupt, broken or ineffectual system that harms the community, such as a juvenile justice system that increases recidivism, or child welfare services that don’t protect children. They follow an issue until the community reaches its goal or resolves the issue. No more parachuting in and out of communities and stories.

This network does one more thing: it enables jurnos to share trusted information with each other. If it’s a smart network, then it can alert jurnos to similar issues cropping up in several communities, and help them work together on reporting an issue, as well as coordinate developments with jurnos in topic-based communities. This approach is already developing in a nascent form with Publish2.

Figure out how the content of this site can be accessible on people’s mobile phones. Start with the easy stuff first, useful information and tools that are branded and that drive people to participate more in the network.

This Can Make Money

The network is key to financing this operation. Geographic sites pick up the local advertisers who’ve been priced out of the paper for lo these many years. Examples of local ad-supported Web sites exist. One’s right there in West Seattle — WestSeattleBlog.com. (Key advice for the Seattle Times: Don’t try to compete with the WestSeattleBlog; learn from them; partner up with them; make them an offer they can’t refuse.) Topic-based sites pick up niche advertisers who’ve been priced out of the paper, as well as niche advertisers or general advertisers who want to reach several communities, or particular interest-based communities. Look at networks such as NameMedia, NetShelter, and Federated Media. Is it possible to develop a regional version of those national networks?

The organization doesn’t have to be all ad-based. It could throw a little Spot.Us into the mix, if the community gathers ’round an issue and wants to support an investigation. And for neighborhoods that don’t have enough business base to support a news network, perhaps some foundation money could get one started, and the jurnos could help foster the economic health of the community so that, eventually, enough business would exist to support the network.

The Paper

With a distributed news/information/social network, the Seattle Times won’t need a big central office anymore. Sell it. Rent it out. But  keep the printing presses. Yes, it would still put out a paper. It won’t appear every day. And it won’t look ANYTHING like it does now. Model the content on the new Web approach: graphic, community-driven, pushing people to engage with the network, i.e., each other.

Maybe it comes out Thursday, Friday and Sunday, to coincide with the days that advertisers want to reach people in the community with a print product. Maybe Thursday’s food day, and the content focuses on everything food, from restaurant reviews, recipes, to issues such as local food safety or how the community’s doing on its goal of becoming a neighborhood of localvores. Maybe Friday’s local entertainment and weekend outdoor activities. The movies may have been sucked up by Fandango, but there’s probably much more local activity that could support a paper. Sunday’s inserts continue to be as interesting as what jurnos provide (jurnos recognize that the community values information and news in advertising as much as traditional news and they embrace it), and frame a mix of fun and summaries and analysis of community issues.

It’s a Bottom-Up World

A small group of editors — if it’s financially warranted — can aggregate information/stories from all the sites. In this scenario, 90 percent of the organization’s effort is put into a couple of dozen inch-wide, mile-deep sites, and small group puts together a Newser for Seattle.

If the Seattle Times starts now, it could keep its good name, its dedication to good journalism, and its good entrepreneurial jurnos –  the kind of people who can nurture this nichified network through its growing pains. Maybe the organization won’t employ as many people as it does now, but in business-as-usual, the layoffs would continue anyway as the organization shrinks. A shift from mass-media to Web-based nichified media would encourage those who want to write only, who want to stay in a world of we-talk you-listen, who won’t embrace beat-blogging, who don’t see the value in social networking, to go somewhere else.

It would be a tough year or two of experimentation, learning to let the community help reconfigure what the news organization does for the community, learning to be flexible and agile, which means making as many mistakes in the shortest time possible, shouting out, “This is fascinating!” with each one. It’s uncomfortable, messy, uncertain, and scary. And that’s the way it’s supposed to feel if you’re making this very difficult and inspiring transition.

A friend once said about skydiving — if you ain’t scared, you ain’t having fun. In the case of transitioning to a Web-based medium, if you ain’t scared, you ain’t moving forward.

And if the Seattle Times ain’t moving forward, other folks will.

Here’s John Cook’s take on the Seattle situation. And his 10 steps for saving the Seattle P-I. He’s co-founder and executive editor for TechFlash, an online tech biz publication that’s partnered with the weekly Business Journal, which (obviously) also has a Web site.

I was perusing the Public Editor page on the New York Times today, wondering what exactly it means to be the “readers’ representative.” While I was noodling on this question, this piece on “The Promise of Real-Time Reporting,” caught my eye. I jumped into journalism via the magazine (monthly, print) world and now work at a seven-site blog network that never sleeps (literally — you can log on to our system at 11pm or 2pm or 4am and there’s always someone working). I wrestled a little with the constraints of the “need for speed” approach to writing, but have come to appreciate some of the perks. In particular, I thought this bit was interesting:

“When the reporting process plays out in public, that’s a good thing. Readers can and do participate. Their participation has a salutary effect on quality — millions of amateur editors catch a lot that a few professional ones miss. And the process of constant checks on the unfolding story produce incentives to keep pushing.”

Isn’t that what I was just saying about Spot.Us?

I think the same thing holds true for blogging. As Om is often reminding us, good blog posts are short because the story is always unfolding. You build your argument over time, not just over the course of a single story.