Mar 26 2009
The five pillars of a debt-free news organization
I wrote a couple weeks ago of my desire to start a new, online-only news organization covering Toronto and the GTA. One that is nimble and debt-free.
Debt-free? How can this be done?
This is a response to Rohan Jayasekera, who commented on that post.
You’d pay your journalists (”for money”)? So much for the low costs you claimed. Unless you won’t pay them enough to live on, in which case you’ll be in the same territory as Torontoist and blogTO
But I think it can be done, even if only in theory.
Can we develop a news organization that can cover a metropolitan area, not just adequately, but exceptionally well, without borrowing any money?
Possibly, if we follow these five principles:
1. Online-only
Distributing news on the web is next to free. Making the organization online-only frees us from having a circulation department and a production department. Instead we just have a web department, which will build everything we need out of free, open source building blocks.
2. The distributed newsroom
Everyone can work from home, on their own phones and computers. This eliminates the need for a building, an office management team, and an IT department. We can all collaborate on gMail and Google Docs and other free office collaboration software.
Reporters can work their own hours, deciding how best to efficiently use their time to meet quotas.
3. Commission-only salespeople
Any news organization needs skilled, trained salespeople to sell advertising. We pay good commissions and pay for performance. Sales managers too. This eliminates the need to bankroll wages for the sales department.
4. Internology
Borrowing a term from Rob Curley, we use internology to fill databases, correct business listings, and gather news. Every professional reporter gets teamed up with at least one intern, and they use them how they wish: to get quotes, attend meetings, copy edit, whatever the case may be.
Maybe they work a bit like Extreme Programmers, i.e. work in pairs, publish early and often.
This reduces the payroll requirement for professional news staff and increases our ability to cover the Metro area thoroughly. It also contributes to the future of journalism, as we train people to work as journalists one-on-one with professionals.
5. Sweat Equity
How do we pay the people we cannot do without? This gets to the nut of Rohan’s objection. And the only way I can think of to do it is via sweat equity. Reporters, editors, web developers and other essential staff work for some period of time – a year, say – in exchange for shares in the company.
After a year, the company issues shares accordingly, and the company’s profits are meted out in the form of dividends, and we move to a more traditional compensation scheme.
I should add that a sixth pillar has been proposed. After I tweeted these five pillars yesterday, Vaughan Citizen editor Kim Champion tweeted back:
Don’t forget the sixth … mythology.
Fair enough. I realize this is fairly pie-in-the-sky. But what are the actual arguments against? How can we make something like this work? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
8 Responses to “The five pillars of a debt-free news organization”
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The five pillars of a debt-free news organization in Toronto. Tell me what an idiot I am in the comments. http://bit.ly/2gy3rv
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
– Everyone can work from home, on their own phones and computers.
Oh, and you will buy these? You will de-virus them? Fix them when they break, replace them when lost… or stolen? You will provide support for their DSL/cable?
What if someone falls at home? Will you be insured?
There are costs involved with “work at home”. They may not be as high as maintaining an office, but they are there.
@Marc: Short answer (to all of those questions): no.
@VaughanEditor mentions a sixth pillar – mythology. Kind of funny. http://bit.ly/2gy3rv
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Only one person has a comment on this nutty post? http://bit.ly/2gy3rv
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Yes, it might work, given that so many people are now clutching at straws when it comes to possible income (The Onion has a funny item about this at http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/getting_randomly_picked_to). But I worry that the shares will turn out to be worth little or nothing, as I think it will be difficult for the business to both pay a living wage and turn a profit. The problem is the presence of other online-only competitors who, like you, can draw on a large number of unemployed journalists (and talented amateurs). Eventually the number of journalists and businesses will drop to whatever level the market can sustain, but I think that will take a bunch of years, not one year.
I have basically been doing this with the http://americansoccernews.net Web site for close to two years, without results. We aren’t only not turning any profit, we don’t even have any income! Everybody who works for the site contributes for free. In exchange they get to go to games for free and sit in the press box and interview their heroes. But it’s still quite a commitment. Tried the commission-only sales thing briefly but what happened is the sales guys dropped off the face of the earth without closing any deals. I don’t want somebody I don’t know or trust (and don’t pay) representing the company.
Now trying the “tip jar” route after removing all ads (wasn’t worth it). Nothing. Luckily everybody who is involved with the site is doing it because they are passionate about the sport and not because they want to get rich (or even get reimbursed for their troubles). Which is fine as long as we keep that in mind. Some time somebody somewhere will figure out how to make money on print content. Until then we’ll just keep doing our thing.
That said, if anybody wants to help out with copyediting the site give me a shout!
I think it’s fair to say profit may not come for awhile.
Advertisers still don’t want to spend much money on the web just because they’re used to spending very little.
That’s not going to turn around overnight, for sure, but it will have to, because sooner or later because, with traditional media shrinking, professional journalists will increasingly have nowhere to turn but the internet, which means enterprising internet publishers will have to find a way to pay them.
It’s an uphill climb with advertisers simply because they’re used to paying low ad rates for the web. That will change but it’ll be like pulling teeth for awhile.
I think innovation is part of what will attract money. Not just putting a would-be paper magazine on the web, but finding and promoting the medium’s advantages, such as instantaneous communication and the ability to maintain a wide range of contacts, the ability to lay out a story as geography rather than sequence, the ability to link all over the place.
The geo-locating ability of mobile is increasingly a part of the internet-web experience.
How can online news move into niches which mainstream news is retreating from, like local news?
We need to be able to sell a service that handles what other services currently don’t.
Very likely lean times are ahead, but it’s also a time to try and fail. And learn. And maybe do stuff first. I think things will turn around faster than anyone imagined.
By the way, the home office – I pay for and maintain a home office. I invest in it, I spending earnings on better gear, which in turn earns me money as I become ever more viable and efficient.
And I try my damndest to work here instead of anywhere else.
If that means out of necessity becoming a media organization that’s what I’ll have to do, because at this point I can’t see liking some random cubicle better than where I’m sitting right now.