There Go Your Readers – Now See Where They’re Headed So You Can Get Ahead and Lead Them
One of the lessons we can learn from the Light’s success that has real relevance to anyone trying to run a news site on a shoestring – which, given the trends in journalism, from lowest to highest, pretty much means all of you – is that being able to use your wits to maneuver around a on a budget that consists of a roast beef sandwich and a couple turns on the Playstation is a skillset that’s going to be increasingly in demand.
Even a small operation like the Light (which owes its computerization to the civil judgment they won years ago against Synanon – click here or on one of the "Synanon" links at right for Dave's gleeful recounting of the story) can integrate the web into its operation. And it’s not by putting all its content on the web and hoping that readers will go there – it’s by using the web and its readers in a way that allows it to do its job better than ever.
A recent hot scandal (well, by the Light’s standards anyway) demonstrates some of the implications that the web has for news coverage, and how it is reaching even a teeny weeny paper like the Light. The scandal involved a run-in between tourists and park rangers in which pepper spray was deployed. The park rangers and their tactics have become a real hot-button issues in West Marin, where much of the surrounding land is state and federal parks.
According to Mitchell, the initial stories about the incident prompted furious readers to conduct their own web research – research that has uncovered facts that have led to the Light widening its own investigation into the rangers.
“One reader – a bus driver – got a hold of me and said if you go to the New York City Citizens’ Review Board, they’ve done a study on the use of pepper spray, and the dangers, when it’s appropriate,” Mitchell said. “They not only tell you what’s safe and what’s good and what will work and when not to do it, they tell you what the law is and what the police training is.
“That was terribly valuable.
“I could have searched forever to find the really definitive statement of what pepper spray is and how it should be used.”
Relations with law enforcement have always been a tricky issue in Marin County, where its reputation as a haven for aging hippies and young anarchists grates on law-and-order types. These relations were about to take a turn for the worse, when the community found out that the people who were supposedly sworn to serve and protect them were actually mocking and insulting them.
“Another person came to us and ‘Hey, you don’t realize it, but there’s a website for the law enforcement ranger association. You oughtta check that out.’ ” Mitchell said. “We went to the website and we found that rangers who worked out here … were writing in [and] held Marin County residents in absolute contempt.
“The things they would post on their own website – they considered us about like Osama bin Laden, or at least we loved him, if not being part of Al Quaeda.
“We were put down as a bunch of cop-killers and all this kind of nonsense. We’re citizens of Marin County! And it wasn’t limited to West Marin people and it wasn’t directed at the Light in particular, it’s ‘Marin County is a bunch of fruitcakes!’ ”
The Light’s smart, dedicated blending of their oldest resource (their readership) and the newest (the internet) allowed them to take what would have been just a small story, at most a funny Sheriff’s Call gone wrong, and turn it into a cause that is having a transformative effect on the community. The story has woken readers up to a festering problem in their midst, and they’re starting to take steps to demand real changes. This is almost a textbook example of real beneficial watchdog journalism.
So while weeklies may not have the millions and manpower to throw at the web, they do have a real opportunity to be a sort of sterile laboratory (free from the taint of giant wads of cash) where the future of journalism can be invented.
“There are real interesting plays in journalism that weeklies can engage in,” Cauthorn said. “The weeklies and small market papers have got significant mojo.
“This is good stuff and this is the soul of journalism. I sometimes wish we could transplant some of that thinking to metro markets because I tell ya, we’d get a lot better newspapers if we did.”
Cauthorn envisions the weeklies embracing a model where they publish their print version once each week to set the table on what issues are at the forefront. Then the weekly’s website becomes the host for the discussion by the community about those issues, where the people get to do that John Locke thing. By the time the next print issue rolls out, the weekly either uses the community debate to take the story a step further, or dredges up another issue to jump-start yet another discussion.
“I think this would be really interesting, because then you have a really dynamic model where you’re flowing readers back and forth between print and online,” Cauthorn said. “The kind of thing that we could do be doing in metro markets, but that would require – oh my God – creative thought.”
While some question the need for any sort of print version at all, Mitchell says that he thinks hard copy is essential. Nobody can go in and “Photoshop” changes to stories, and at the end of the year, all the issues are bound together to form one year’s first draft of history. (For more on this, click here or on one of the "Advantage of Paper" links at right).
Next: No Porsche for You: Sacrifice the Short-Term Profit for Long-Term Loyalty and Readership
An unassailable niche market – At present, the Light and other weeklies occupy an enviable niche; they cover their local scene better than bigger competitors, yet have the resources and brand-recognition driven advertising to drown out individual bloggers. This may change.
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Internet synergy at a weekly newspaper – The Light’s coverage of a local scandal was aided when internet-savvy readers ratted out U.S. Park Rangers for accusing West Marin residents of being “fruitcakes” who love Osama bin Laden.
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Advantage of paper vs. internet – Mitchell says that the hard copy of the Light forms an unalterable historical record of life in West Marin.
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Synanon's attempt to intimidate the Light backfired, and the judgment Mitchell won paid for the paper's first computer system.
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