This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
It's become very clear we need a local non profit media entity that replaces the tired old newspaper model and the 'one size fits anyone' algorithm driven future offered by social media.
The Longmont Observer regularly publishes stories by our residents called Member Voices. This article falls into that category. It does not, necessarily, represent the views of the Longmont Observer.
By Scott Converse.
This is a topic that's come up quite a bit over the last few years as the local newspaper, owned by a huge media group, that's owned by a hedge fund in New York, continued to squeeze every penny it could out of the local for-profit newspaper.
The final blow came when the now very lightly staffed newspaper closed it's Longmont office earlier this year and moved the last few people to the offices of the Boulder newspaper.
Not Longmont. Boulder.
We no longer have a locally produced newspaper in Longmont. We have several stories about Boulder, Erie, Louisville, Frederick, Lyons and, maybe, 2-3 Longmont stories. As far as the newspaper's resources, all we have is some minimal mind-share of a few people at an office half an hour away that no longer have any real connection to the town they're writing about. Even those that might live here are bound to a paycheck that depends on them writing many stories, for many cities. In depth and complete coverage? Not even close. Service? Outsourced to the Denver paper (try calling them when your newspaper doesn't show up, you'll be surprised who answers).
Longmont, it seems, is just a
chore for this company at this point. It's not the reporters, editors and other employee's fault, they're trapped in a downward spiral of lower and lower profit levels every year and an owner who's only concern is how to sell off the valuable assets (like buildings), squeeze more money out (through layoffs) and spending as little as possible (less news, less paper, as many ads as possible). This isn't just a Longmont problem, it's everywhere.
That's not how local news should be.
Local news should bind a community together. It should inform and enlighten. It should be accurate and honest and it should give us insight into our government, our schools, our businesses, our neighborhoods and our town. It should embody where we live and it should be the heartbeat of our community.
There has to be a way to create something in Longmont that channels the incredible community we have. Any town that could support something Like TinkerMill, the Longmont Makerspace, with over 600 paying members that all volunteer to make it work and that, as a city, donates something around half a million dollars a year to non-profit news like NPR/PBS stations and still pays out almost $1,500,000 a year for just subscriptions to the local newspaper (what my mom calls 'the daily pamphlet') should be able to create and support through donations, sponsorships, underwriting and volunteerism, a non-profit, non-partisan, locally focused news entity like the Longmont Observer. Think of it as a sort of mashup of TinkerMill (paid for by memberships and operated by those same volunteer members) and NPR (a small amount donated each month by a few thousand people).
That's why we created the Longmont Observer. It's a new kind of local news model that, we think, just might work.
I'd been thinking about this for the last year or so, and the newspaper moving out of Longmont instigated my writing a blog post about needing to do it several months ago. Feel free to give it a read if you've got a few minutes. It outlines some of the original thinking around creating a local non-profit news source.
What's really interesting is it soon became clear I wasn't the only one thinking this way.
I let some of my contacts in Longmont know that it seemed we should be doing something like this and Jennifer Ferguson, a friend and colleague for several years now, introduced me to some others who also might be interested. So, we kicked it off.
We had several people come to the first member meetings. Some were journalists who were looking to get back to real journalism, but also needed a paying job to do it (something we can't do as a new non-profit); some wanted to be involved but also had other interests and didn't really have the time, but over the last couple of months, we've gotten a small team of volunteers that's really dedicated to the idea of a non-profit, non-partisan, community driven, locally focused news entity.
It's small right now, but's it's (mostly) working in a limited way. We get several stories out each week, at least one and sometimes several a day, as well as public announcements from government and local non-profits. It consists of Lizzy Rogers, who recently moved with her husband to the area from the UK, Sergio Angeles who's family has lived in the area for years and myself, a raised in Longmont guy who came home to be closer to family. We meet on a consistent basis (every weekday at 1 pm at TinkerMill) to go over content, stories, ideas, technical issues and implementations, whatever's needed, and we all serve as writer, reporter, photographer, videographer, editor, social media posters and general contributors-again, whatever's needed.
There are also some others such as Byron Kominek who was there at the beginning and provide periodic articles (such as the excellent Priciest Coffee in Longmont story) do grant writing and provide regular input, and technical folks like Bob Boyles, who's an ace sysadmin and technical expert on publishing that I've worked on several projects with other the years (both for profit and non-profit). These folks are putting in at least some time (often quite a bit of time) weekly.
We really do need more help though. If you're interested in writing, photography, videography, podcasting, editing or helping on the technical side, we'd love to have you. You don't need any specific journalism experience, just a desire to help create a community resource that accurately reports and informs what's going on in our town. The more local people we have pitching in to make it work, the more we'll be able to cover and the more we'll all truly know about, and be connected to, our community and our city.
For those who say you have to be a trained journalist to create something like this, I say hogwash. Founding TinkerMill, and working with its members for years, taught me that anyone can learn and become an expert, or at least good enough, with no more than time, effort and desire. No one comes out of journalism school knowing how to be a good writer, photographer, editor or social media expert. All of them, every single one of them, learned how to really do it one way: By doing it. Doing the work, day in and day out. That's what we'll be doing at the Longmont Observer, and we'd love you to join us. If you've got 20 hours a week you could spend doing this, fantastic! Come talk with us! If you only have time to put together a story, or take some pictures every week or two, that's also great! Or something in between? We'd love to have you. Whatever you can do to help would be welcome.
If you're interested we have our daily editorial meeting at 10am M-F at TinkerMill (1840 Delaware Ct.). Any and all are welcome to come see the process of getting the Longmont Observer put together every day and seeing if you're interested in getting involved.
If you'd like to talk to someone first, drop Sergio or I an email ([email protected] or [email protected]) or give us a call at 720-600-2977 (this rings both our cell phones).
We're excited for what's to come and we're looking forward to meeting and working with more of you over the coming months and years as we create this new kind of Local Non-Profit News Media Entity together.
Scott Converse is a Longmont resident who's family has lived here since 1965. He's a co-founder of the Longmont Observer. He's the original founder and was the orginal president of TinkerMill, the Longmont makerspace and he helped found Startup Longmont and Longmont Startup Week. His past lives have included working in executive positions with several large fortune 50 companies like Apple, Paramount Pictures, Motorola and MCI as well as founding multiple startup companies like ClickCaster, Medioh and ExtractCraft. He's started some other interesting things like OneNet (a global BBS network in the late 80's/early 90's). He moved back to Longmont several years ago to be closer to family.
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Longmont Observer is a Colorado Non-Profit Corporation with 501(c)3 public charity status.
Local Non-Profit News by Longmont Observer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.scottconverse.com/2017/02/we-need-local-non-profit-media-entity.html.
