It's a Wonderful Light
How A Sleepy Little Community Banded Together to Save Its Beloved Newspaper -- and What That Can Teach Us About Saving the Soul of Journalism
By David LaFontaine
I was trying to ask legendary editor/publisher David Mitchell the Big Important Question: how to save the soul of American journalism, but the wind shifted direction and the stench made it impossible to talk.
It’s understandable. Mitchell's second-story offices of the Point Reyes Light (weekly circulation: 4,100 and rising) are in a converted creamery only a country block from the cattle yards that still supply the good people of Marin County with their curds and whey.
I'd been trying to interview Mitchell about the state of journalism today -- because not a day goes by without another thumbsucker being inflicted on us, wailing and gnashing about how the whole profession is headed straight for Satan's jaws.
I take the thick fragrance of bullshit that chokes out my question to be a rather literal form of cosmic commentary on the whole subject.
Nonetheless.
I came to ask David Mitchell about truth, integrity, survival and technology because he's the kind of guy who'd know. The answers that I got have led to a much wider-ranging story than I originally envisioned, one that examines what kind of place the news business has for Mitchell's style of uncompromising integrity and quirky regionalism in the face of the challenges from the dot-coms, the bloggers and the future of news (cellphone-based content, VoIP, the ubiquitous mobile web, etc.).
I've broken up what Mitchell has to say into five different stories, with some biting commentary from Bob Cauthorn (former VP of digital media for the San Francisco Chronicle, and one of the real innovators of on-line journalism) and a few links and quotes from related stories. But first, more about the rise, fall and rise of the Light.
In the fall of 2004, Mitchell's one true lifelong love, his newspaper, the Point Reyes Light, teetered on the brink of extinction. The San Francisco Weekly did a story "Can the Light Stay Afloat?" about how Mitchell had been steadily draining his meager inheritance to run the paper at a loss, a story that was then picked up nationally -- it even made Romenesko.
"The crisis is that there were debts that needed to be paid, and I went into my own pocket to pay them," Mitchell said. "Of course, there's only so long that you can do that until you reach in there and all you grab is lint.
"There were a handful of large advertisers who also weren't paying, and I'll tellya, when you consider that you've paid commissions on the ads sold and then the money never comes in, it's kind of a double whammy."
Then, in a scene straight out of the 1946 weepy Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life, the good townsfolk of Point Reyes, Bolinas, Tomales, Stinson Beach et al., came together and basically passed the hat and bailed him out.
"When we got into the financial trouble, it was our own readers, including some who had been completely against the Light's editorial policies that saved us," Mitchell said. "I couldn't believe it!
"People -- including some who I had fought bitterly with over the years -- were flat-out giving us money. A couple of people wrote us checks for $1,000 and almost every day when people wrote in to renew their paper, someone would say, 'Here's an extra twenty bucks.' We got lots of people who just gave us $100. Even people who didn't hardly have two nickels to rub together stepped up and gave us $5."
Mitchell is still overwhelmed by the unexpected generosity. Sixteen readers wrote in to ask the Light to raise its cover price to $1, and local merchants that sell the paper started giving the paper the full purchase price (instead of keeping 50%). Both groups said that they wanted to do whatever they could to help the Light survive, because the community can’t survive without it.
Somewhere, Tribune and Cox and Gannet execs are weeping at the thought of having readers to devoted that they not only keep subscribing, but form fan clubs devoted to your paper and then demand that you raise your price.
At this point, with the fall circulation reports looming, most circulation managers would settle for just not hemorrhaging readers (and you've probably all heard the not-funny punchline about the last L.A. Times reader croaking sometime around 2030 -- no doubt still wondering what the hell is up with the schizo Sunday magazine). Hell, some circulation managers would settle for not having to wear an orange prison jumpsuit for the next couple years.
According to Mitchell, the Light lost $43,600 in the first five months of 2004. During the same period of time this year, thanks to community support (and a tough new business manager), they were in the red a measly $1,800, and on their way to a slim profit by the end of July 2005.
That's a hell of a turnaround in only six months, and quite a contrast from what Mitchell told his employees at Christmas (see video), when things still looked shaky. The seeds of that turnaround can be seen at that same party, in the form of a folksong composed by one of the Light's readers. The most popular section of the paper is the often-bizarre Sheriff's Calls, and one of the Light's readers turned the funniest calls into a folksong.
Not all stories are so light-hearted. In 1979, the Light won the Pulitzer Prize for community service for its exposes on the violent and paranoid Synanon cult. In 1984, Paul Michael Glaser, still fresh from Starsky & Hutch, played Mitchell in a made-for-TV movie (with the embarrassing, Skinemax After-Dark-esque title of Attack on Fear) based on the book that Mitchell wrote about the experience, The Light on Synanon.
The Light has been famous ever since for its uncompromising integrity, and to this day, the paper has a reputation for being the training ground for strong, accomplished reporters and editors. [Full Disclosure: my wife, Janine Warner, worked at the Light from 1991-92. While working on this story, I stayed at Mitchell’s house and even took a dip in his real-live Marin County hot tub.]
Mitchell’s connection to West Marin is deep and passionate, and he sprinkles his conversation with insider's anecdotes about how he perceives his mission to be to record the living history of his community.
"We cover a lot of special districts, which are kind of unique to California," Mitchell said. "There's no other newspaper anywhere that's covering this stuff. Even a big paper doesn't have enough reporters to go to all these small town meetings and report on what's out here.
"As a result the people really need us."
OK, OK, so Your Results May Vary. West Marin ain't exactly Mainstreet U.S.A., is it? I mean come on. Let's acknowledge the ungulate in the room. Marin is famous for being the wealthiest and most left-wing county in America, populated by self-righteous ultra-leftist elitist yuppie politically correct disconnected effete snobs. Like the American Taliban. Reliable punching bags for the Limbaugh O’Reilly Coulters.
Mitchell has managed to get these people to put down their old issues of Ramparts and La Granma to eagerly read what he's got to say each week. I guess once a week is just about the right dosage of David Mitchell -- the man is blessed with a Cartesian source of energy, constantly jumping to his feet and charging off excitedly in the grip of a story, a parable, a really really important point that he's trying to illustrate with abrupt hand gestures and capped by a snorting snickergrin with his pipe clenched in his teeth.
David Mitchell is a character, and if you're a journalist who fancies himself a kind of throwback to the Hildy Johnson era, you can't help but think that he'd be a helluva lot of fun to work for. This, after all, is a guy who sprinkles his speech with phrases such as "Sartre's Madeline" and runs to grab works of classical literature to get just the right quote to illustrate a story. Who can take a picture of two ladybugs on top of each other, refer to "The Rites of Spring," and note in his weekly column that the pictures of the shameless ladybugs have been censored, as they both were under 18 years of age.
Sadly, resuscitating the Light has taken its toll on Mitchell, and he talks more and more about selling the paper, entrusting his legacy to someone else with the drive, ambition and sheer cussedness to carry on.
"This is the third time that I've brought the Light back from the brink of bankruptcy." Mitchell said. "I'm not sure I'm up for it a fourth time."
If we are to learn anything from the rescue of the Light, it is that perhaps we can trust that the number of readers who attack us will be balanced by the readers who, energized by our trust, will step up to defend us. Which is the beginning of a strong and meaningful dialogue -- one of the supposed functions of the press.
One more thing: I know a lot of what follows seems to be about weekly newspapers, the oldest form of journalism. Hardly appropriate for the Online Journalism Review, with its readership of the bleeding-edge, newest of the new budding media moguls. But the parallels between this small print outlet and on-line news are marked, and the lessons Mitchell and the Light have to teach about so appealing to your audience that they fight to keep you alive are ones that apply across the news spectrum.
In accord with one of those lessons, I've broken this down into six bite-sized chunks:
There Go Your Readers -- Now See Where They're Headed So You Can Get Ahead and Lead Them
If you report stories that mean something to your audience, often they will chip in and help you out -- increasingly via the internet. So use the web to start setting up a more conversational approach to the news -- where the audience doesn't just sit there, but often leads you to things you never would have found on your own.
No Porsche for You: Sacrifice the Short-Term Profit for Long-Term Loyalty and Readership
Dave Mitchell cut his own salary to the bone to finance stories that changed the way his community viewed itself. They responded by saving his ass.
Drop The Contempt For The Readers. Drop It! Back Away With Your Hands In Plain View...
Editors think that giving the audience what it wants means the news is going to be stupid and irrelevant. That means that the readers are stupid. They're not -- and they're tired of being treated that way.
If you're not relevant to your readers, they're going to ignore you the same way they ignore loud and obnoxious idiots. So focus on stories that really mean something to them. The Founding Fathers intended the press to have an informed point of view, and readers respond to journalism that makes a difference.
Turn Weakness into Strength by Imitating Soap Operas
If you're stretching just to make it through the week, betting everything on a big story may not be the best move. So publish it a little bit at a time. Besides, you might wind up with a completely different story than the one you started out with.
Bob Cauthorn Wants to Lead Your Publisher into the Light
This quote pretty much says it all:
"The newspaper executive class are a bunch of people who inherited a monopoly and have done a terrible job of managing that monopoly. The only people who've done a worse job of managing a monopoly are the TelCos. These are not creative people, these are not people used to creating things. These people follow each other like lemmings. The existing belief has nothing to do with creativity, they don't value creativity, they don't value controversial thinking. Somebody like me scares and enrages these people."
In addition to the weekly Point Reyes Light Newspaper, Mitchell publishes a quarterly magazine called The Coastal Traveler.
Video highlights
David Mitchell gives bleak report at Christmas dinner. (Windows Media File, 540k)
"Journalists are supposed to have a bias," Mitchell said. (Windows Media File, 1 MB )
Efforts to save The Light. (Windows Media File, 2.8 MB )
Mitchell has had some dark days along the way. (Windows Media File, 940k)
Park rangers call West Marin residents "fruitcakes." (Windows Media File, 4.5 MB )
The Light's weekly rundown of the Sheriff's calls is leavened with Mitchell's droll wit, and readers from around the world (from Novosibirsk to Miami) have made it their favorite. Here, a local performs a song comprised of the best of the Sheriff's calls. (BONUS: Stick around to the end to learn about the delusional farmer's wife and the milking machine.) (Windows Media File, 1.2 MB )
Read the Sherriff's calls, a popular feature of The Point Reyes Light.
The story behind the story
If you're interested in hearing everything Mitchell has to say, the streaming video of our conversations is available here and a full transcript of his remarks is available here. A full transcript of Bob Cauthorn's take on the lessons we can learn from the Light is available here and an mp3 of me explaining why I was drawn to this story and what I think about it is here.
I include all this as a way of demonstrating in concrete terms how it might be possible to put some of Mitchell's theories into practice --theories that I've tried to refine and explain in the following sections.
The streaming video shows how to use the web to blend print and video, the transcripts and podcast, a way to help build reader trust by making a full disclosure of our motives and methods by showing them all the information we gathered and examined to come to our conclusions.
It occurred to me that our readers might not automatically assume we're spinning and misquoting if we allow them the kind of access to our source material that movie directors offer on DVDs. This doesn't mean that news organizations that break stories like Watergate, Iran/Contra or Downing Street Memo should go nuts and issue Lord of the Rings-style Special Limited Collector's Editions (although that kind of extra revenue might be one way to incentivize good investigative reporting). But one of the most common complaints lodged by the subjects of our stories is that we pick and choose what we include -- that dreaded 'quoted out of context' accusation. Well, included herein is most of the context of my interviews with Dave Mitchell and Bob Cauthorn. I couldn't quite figure out how to include the odor of Mitchell's office that I referenced in the lead, but I doubt that that omission will prompt all that many complaints.
I'm not sure if news stories will ever evolve to the point where they are routinely given the "wiki" treatment --that is, where we as reporters will just go out and gather raw information and slap it up on the web for the public to mix&match into whatever forms they like. But if you are so inclined, feel free to go through the transcripts, the video clips and the links I've accumulated here, and if you come up with a story that you think is more compelling ... well, have at it.