Today's news is yesterday's news

Today's Post has a piece, "Tightened Belts Could Put Press In a Pinch," about the importance of newspapers in investigating government, specifically corruption. Hey, I agree. Granted, it doesn't always make a difference. One example are the great set of articles written in the Post in 2002 about the failures of DC Community Development Corporations to accomplish all that much, which I discussed in the blog entry "Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations."

(Note that recently the Voice of the Hill ran two articles as a kind of follow up to the Post articles, "Main Street group struggles to lead H Street revitalization efforts," about H Street Main Street and "H Street CDC, residents have long been divided on street’s future," about the H Street Community Development Corporation.)

Relatedly, the local as close to a muckracking journal as DC has (other than themail@dcwatch.com), The Common Denominator, ceased publication. That's tragic because it was one of the only places that published some great local investigations, including award-winning pieces about the Federal City Council and the failure of the DC Government to enforce community amenities agreements on the Fort Lincoln "New Town" Development in northeast DC (which is, lamentably, the model for Vincent Orange's misguided proposal for the Florida Market).

Yet the question is was there no market for the Common Denominator, or was it a flawed business plan and direction, or both?

Here's something I sent to the paper when their financial difficulties first came to light last year. I never got a response. And this was before I started to blog, in October 2004. (And another thing. The paper looked like it was laid out and designed by children... And why the focus on local high school sports. Given the disconnection of parents from the school system, were there really much marketing possibilities from such coverage?)
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I am distressed to read about the financial crisis faced by TCD.

Do you have a good business plan? How much money do you need? What would be the plan to take the paper to the next level so that it can publish based on solid revenues?

Mary and I have talked many times about TCD and its importance and centrality to better government in the city.

She mentioned your belief that "real newspapers charge money" for subscriptions and/or for single copies. I think that this glosses over the major point in media economics, a statement that is usually on the first page of any textbook, that "the business of publishing [and broadcasting] is providing audiences to advertisers."

So one needs to see how to do that best for a particular type of publication in a particular market. If providing a free paper works in building a large enough audience that is appealing to advertisers, fine. If paid for-profit works, fine. Or, maybe the best model in DC is nonprofit? The Nation is a "for-profit" that for most of its history hasn't made money--it has had backers with money. Nonetheless, it does have a nonprofit affiliate that accepts donations.

Thought publications have a difficult time getting advertising. Neighborhood-based businesses aren't likely to advertise because the reach isn't great enough in any one particular neighborhood (City Paper works because of its entertainment focus, publications like the Georgetown Current or the Hill Rag because of their centrality in specific neighborhoods that have strong cores of local businesses). And of course we know that you're getting the short stick regarding DC government advertising, a segment that seems to be owned lock, stock, and barrel by Fagon. Publications like the Washington Informer probably get most of their profitable advertising (full pages from banks, chain supermarkets, utilities) because of their LSDBE status.

Are you familiar with the online examples from City Limits? They are different but each has online and print components, although they are monthly publications, rather than weekly or bi-weekly. City Limits is an advocacy group that publishes a well-regarded magazine that long predated the web. Gotham Gazette (Citizens Union Foundation) really is an Internet-based phenomenon. However, both are nonprofits. Could we make a case to someone like George Soros?

As we are fiddling with the plans to relaunch the Citizens Planning Coalition, the Gotham Gazette model is very appealing -- strong information component + the advocacy piece of the Center for the Urban Future (the parent organization of City Limits). There is no reason to not do this in association with The Common Denominator (one of the ideas I expressed to Mary was offering an option of a subscription to TCD as a part of membership, and this idea could be used with other community groups in the city).

OTOH, right now the relaunch is more an idea, and we don't have money behind us at the moment to go forward. (That's why Soros is on my mind...) One big difference between the two is that GG has a daily e-newsletter that you can get and it brings you back to the site. I think these days people need reminders. City Limits used to do the same thing, but now it only does its newsletter once/week. I don't think it has the same impact.

Another model is the strong focus on the local by the Philadelphia Daily News, where they really do some great writing on vision and future for the city, slugged "Rethinking Philadelphia."

Their featured columnist, Carla Anderson, the "Urban Warrior" has recently begun doing more focused "consumer-style" bulldog reporting on city quality-of-life issues. Similarly, the Toronto Star has a nice feature called The Fixer on similar issues, including on-line monitoring of the status on improving/not improving the various issues they've identified.

The Philadelphia City Paper recently copied the Daily News' "Grow City" campaign with "Marketing 215." However, this is a good way, in my opinion, to consider the direction of a relaunch to build readership. There's nothing to stop The Common Denominator from launching a Marketing 202 campaign, said campaign being based on "Growing an Inclusive City" which is the rhetoric/"talk" of the Williams Administration, but not the "walk." (The Baltimore City Paper, in my opinion, also does a great job covering local issues.)

What's to prevent you from relaunching via a "Rethinking DC" campaign, which isn't really a refocus, but a re-focused packaging and strengthening of what you're already doing.

To make the paper a must read to me means trying to get people like Johnetta Rose Barras (now she writes for the Examiner), John Capozzi, Terry Lynch, even Malik Shabazz writing regular columns. I'd love to do a "Cityspaces" like column. Again the Philly City Paper did a nice job with this and Mark Jenkins used to write about these issues for our own Washington City Paper.

Another example is The CoastSider, a blog focused on a particular county in California (something I was tipped off to by the e-column by Mark Glaser of the Online Journalism Review). Blogs are definitely a model. I don't really spend much time with blogs because I already spend too much time online, and I don't really have good RSS receiving capabilities, but they are a fine model for rethinking what to do. E.g., I really like this one about Florida, South of the Suwannee, which like Gotham Gazette is a nice model of what can be done.

I know someone by email who is one of the world's leading newspaper designers and I had broached with him before the possibility of pro-bono design assistance to you. The Philly Daily News is a good example of strong cover photography and clean typefaces. Newsday too does a great job in this area.

Index Keywords: media; civic-engagement