Possibilities for public support of news media are clustering in some key areas – foundation grants, member donations, targeted micro-payments, and government support.

Our group discussed how some forms of public support can threaten a news operation’s independence, either by funding coverage of certain topics to a degree that can skew the overall news agenda, or by subjecting the newsroom to corporate or political influence.

By far, the Holy Grail for public support is to raise an endowment big enough to generate the annual revenue needed to run a news initiative, be it a newsroom or a Pro Publica project.  This liberates news projects from continual fundraising and lets them concentrate on the journalism.
NPR-like drives for donor support have sustained public radio, but can contribute to tensions between the national programmers and local affiliate.

Several experiments are just now underway that involve soliciting micro payments from individuals.  Len Witt’s Representative Journalism project asks people to support a reporter.  David Cohn’s Spot.us project asks people to fund a particular story.  And Harvard’s Berkman Center has developed software, Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), that aims to engage vendors and customers in new ways.
Should government support the news media in a BBC-like model, possibly with an Internet tax?   Such ideas met with cautions of recent influence peddling by executives the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Could the cost of producing news content be supported by those who aggregate it, much like the cable companies support CSPAN? Or could major universities like Harvard shelter news projects? Perhaps.
Should philanthropic foundations be catalysts for what news media ought to  do, rather than simply funders of the status quo?

As important is the question of whether news organizations would be more successful attracting public support if they reframed their mission, less as an act of information, and more as an act of community building.

“Can you make the case that you are filing a need?” asked Jay Rosen.

Can you show that news media exist not just to cover community, but to build it as well?

Dan Pacheco, Northwest Voice, John Wilpers, Boston Now; Jarah Euston, Fresno Famous; Dan Barkin, Raleigh News and Observer

Moderator: David Cohn

The panelists talked of their development of user-generated content on the local level, involving those who Barkin called “people formerly known as the audience.”

Pacheco outlined his creation of nine different social networking and user-generated print products, including Northwest Voice. Wilpers spoke of BostonNow, which reverse publishes, putting bloggers into the paper. Euston talked of starting up Modestofamous and Fresno Famous, local entertainment portals which were eventually sold to McClatchy. And Barkin talked of the Observer’s efforts to give readers a voice in the paper by placing their stories and photos posted online on a previously moribund Page 2 in the metro section and getting them to share their experiences for an expose on state traffic courts.

“The newspapers have a tremendous asset to be able to reverse publish,” said Barkin. “If they don’t utilize that asset, they’re really missing a bet. Most still don’t. A very small fraction of newspapers are doing any reverse publishing. They’re not using that significant magnet of printing content to bring people onto their website.”

Of particular note was the Observer’s community site, share.triangle.com, with content from the site feeding a page in the paper. It is also using the community to help with reporting.

“One of the things we did in the middle of our reporting, we invited the public in with a fairly big display on our city and state front,” said Barkin. “We need your help with x, y, and z. Tell us about your experiences in court. Tell us what happens on the highway. Wegot a tremendous response, incorporated the response in a prominent part of the report.”

All of the panelists, especially Wilpers of Boston Now, said they use the user-generated web content to produce print publications, which in turn drive the production of more web content. Wilpers said as many as two-thirds of his bloggers make it in to the paper.

“All of you print, great irony,” said Jarvis.
Debbie Gallant, of baristanet, said she was not interested in a print component.

“Going to paper and having validation in print is something we’re not seeing,” she said. “We’ve exceeded the local newspaper in tems of circulation. We’ve become the game in town. The reporters from The Star-Ledger get real excited when we link to their stuff on baristanet. The digital game can become the game.”

Jarvis asked Jim Willse, managing editor of the Ledger, what his relationship should be with baristanet. “I haven’t got the foggiest idea,” he said, before suggesting there might be some synergy on the revenue side of the ball and with content such as high school sports.

Jarvis suggested a meeting between the two during hallway time later in the afternoon.

The original site, a labor of love, was updated by hand every week in static HTML. Eventually, Fresno Famous switched over to Drupal which allowed everyone to post directly to the site and enabled forums, comments and blog posts. It has also become a hub for people to get informed about city council meetings, school board decisions and local politics in general. Today the site is totally user-driven.

Main Goal of Fresno Famous: To make Fresno a better place to live. As small farming communities, Fresno and Modesto have reputations of being “the armpit of California and that’s not really true. There is a lot of great talent there — but the community is very fragmented they might not know about local politics, music or events,” says Euston. “Fresno Famous provides one place for everyone to feed on everything that we thought was good about the town.”

Notable Achievements: As a community center Fresno Famous has played an active role in the discussion of downtown Fresno’s redevelopment. In one particular instance, plans for a project on Broadway Row were released on Fresno Famous to a hailstorm of complaints that eventually convinced the city government to cancel the plan.

“Fresno Famous has influenced how the city thinks about the issue…which is a perennial topic of conversation if you live in Fresno,” said Euston.

A Surprising Realization: The first surprise with Fresno Famous was the general timidity of users in the beginning. Euston found that it’s not easy to get people to promote themselves or friends. “We thought once we had Drupal going people would be positing all the time about how great some event was,” says Euston. She found that as community manager she also had to play the role of cheerleader, encouraging and supporting people who were too nervous to post to the site. “Being a blogger, I don’t have a problem with that [postings thoughts online], but a lot of people weren’t sure what to do.”

Biggest Practical Lesson/Mistake: Being too cautious in the beginning. Fresno Famous didn’t allow people to embed any code other than HTML into their blog posts, which meant no Youtube videos, flash graphics, etc. There was a general fear of negative participation. “We thought people would take advantage of that and screw with the site,” said Euston. As such, Fresno Famous didn’t allow anonymous comments.

There was a process of learning to trust the community to do whatever it wanted. But since allowing the community more freedom the site has had almost no issues. “Fresno Famous is a real community with a geographic counterpart. Because people see each other in coffee shops around town, they behave online,” says Euston.

Money: Fresno Famous was based completely on advertising revenue and made enough to hire two full time employees and a few part-timers. In December of 2006 Fresno Famous, which had over 2,000 users, was sold to McClatchy which owned the Fresno Bee.

Future Goals: Almost one year since the sale not much about the site has changed, according to Euston. Today Euston is working towards her MBA at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. She intends to stay in the online media space on the business development side.

What do you hope to get from people attending this conference?

“I want to hear from some of the success stories, why they think they’ve been successful and able to harness communities and motivate them to participate in a site.