Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: startups

What Happened and What’s Next With The Compass Experiment

“So what happened?”

That is the first question I get after “How are you?” from every person I have spoken to in the past month. But for the most part, they already know what happened to The Compass Experiment. They’ve heard it many times before.

It wasn’t anything dramatic. It rarely is when a startup or product within a larger company pivots or concludes. In fact, it is such a familiar story that it the fourth time since 2010 that some version of it has happened to me.

We all know last year was a challenging one for many media entities. McClatchy went through a bankruptcy and a sale, emerging in late summer with a new owner and new people in charge

As it happens sometimes, one management group’s pet innovation project becomes the odd man out when priorities, plans, and players change. In February, McClatchy decided to reorganize Compass in hopes of making the two local news startups financially sustainable on a shorter timeline. 

Instead of running Compass and its two sites, Mahoning Matters and The Longmont Leader, as a primarily independent business entity within McClatchy, it would become part of larger networks. The hope was the benefits of shared resources and network effects could spur faster growth. Mahoning Matters would be fully integrated into McClatchy as one of its publications. The Leader would be spun off and sold to our partners at Village Media. The three-person central team that helped run the revenue, fundraising, and audience efforts at both sites would be made redundant (that included me). 

As far as solutions go, it could have been a lot worse. I was not involved in the decisions, but I would have also suggested I be the first to go if I had been. After all, the goal of the overall project was to make the local sites self-sustainable. From day one, I have been working toward the goal of eliminating my own position. I just thought I had more time. 

What I didn’t want was for our local teams to see any cuts. They were both too new and at too precarious a place in their life cycles to withstand losses. Mahoning Matters had just celebrated its first anniversary in October, and Longmont had just turned the corner on seven months. 

Both sites have small teams (five full-time staffers at Longmont, six at Mahoning Matters) and tight budgets. We were operating as lean as possible to get through the pandemic with a plan to grow as our communities opened back up. To cut from such a small base would have been soul-crushing, and I’m just relieved I didn’t have to do it. 

So what now?

As disappointed as I am to have had to leave at this point of the story, I have no regrets about joining this project. I never do when something like this happens. I learned so much from this experience and I’m proud of all we did in my time with McClatchy. 

I entered into Compass with the goals of hiring the right team and building local news products for audiences that deserved better news. I did that, we did that, and it still matters to those communities. The people I hired continue to do great work. The stories they write and the relationships they have built locally are worthy of celebrating (please give them your support if you have the means).

We learned a great deal about audience research, building new products, launching revenue partnerships, and testing new processes, tools, and ideas in our local markets. We shared some of this on The Compass Experiment’s Medium site, and I think those running the sites now will continue to share more going forward. 

I hope to continue to share more of my learnings and experience here, too. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to my blogging heydey like it was early in the lifecycle of this site, but I would like to continue to be part of the conversation about making local news, sustainability, running startups, etc. as I consider my next moves. 

On that note, I'm looking for my next role and picking up some training, consulting, and short-term projects along the way. It's a weird and scary time to be unemployed in journalism, so please keep me in mind if you or someone you know needs a me

Forging a new source for local news in Longmont, Colorado

A global pandemic probably seems like a bad time to be building a new local news website.

Economies both global and local are in precarious positions, unemployment is soaring, advertising has disappeared and nobody is up for in-person events. And yet, the need and demand for local news and information has never been greater.

The circumstances call for some bold action in local news. If now isn’t the time to show up for our communities, then when?

This is why The Compass Experiment will soon be launching our second local news website in Longmont, Colorado. We hope to have this new publication, The Longmont Leader, ready to go by the end of May.

Our team learned a lot in launching our first Compass site, Mahoning Matters, last year. We had to rush to build and launch a new local news site in the wake of the closure of Youngstown’s local newspaper. We managed to get it up just 40 days later. To do that, we had to cut some corners and improvise a few things. For the second site, we had big plans to take our time and do everything just right.

The Compass Experiment is creating sustainable local news –and needs your help

Photo: Getty Images

Anyone watching the headlines lately knows that local newsrooms across the country are hurting, and some have disappeared altogether. Many more still are barely operating, publishing news as a shadow of their former selves. Amid these closures and cutbacks, news deserts — areas that have no locally-based media — are blooming.

In losing their local media, these areas are losing some of the vital ways they used to connect as a community. Births, deaths, local sports, city council, and businesses opening or closings are all left to be passed around as rumors on social media.

This is where the Compass Experiment comes in.

We are a local news laboratory founded by McClatchy and Google to explore new sustainable business models for local news. Over the next three years, we will launching three digital-only news operations in small to mid-sized U.S. communities that have limited sources of local, independent journalism. Our goal is not only to support the dissemination of news in these communities, but also to make the local operations financially self-sustaining.

Local news is where I started my career and I feel it is the bedrock of our industry’s connection with the audience. Local news tells their stories, lives in their communities and earns their trust through the kind of accountability that comes when you might run into your area reporter at the grocery store. We cannot ensure local journalism will survive for the long-haul without a focus on sustainability, which is why I sought to be a part of this initiative in the first place.

While we are very early in this project — so early, in fact, that I technically haven’t started yet — but here are a few things I want to share about our plans so far.

1. We aren’t going to be in the business of parachute journalism.

I have no interest in dropping journalists into unfamiliar places and giving the locals the news we want give them. The best community journalism is created by people who know it best. This is why we will be actively involving communities in the development of the sites and hiring local journalists who already know and love the area.

2. All sites won’t be the same.

All communities are not the same, so why would we assume they all need and want the same out of their journalism? We won’t be replicating the same cookie-cutter approach to every site’s coverage, but rather taking a custom approach dictated by the needs of each place.

3. These sites will have to be self-sustaining at some point.

To help solve the problems facing local news in the long-term, we have to focus on the business model. The reason this is an “experiment” and not a “project” is that we are using this opportunity to innovate and adapt new potential sources of revenue for these local sites.

4. We won’t be doing this alone.

We know there are many bright minds already working hard to create sustainable local media across the U.S. and the world. I believe we can get further, faster by working together. So I’m going to ensure we also are learning from what’s already going on out there and collaborate with those who share our goals to find new paths to what can help community news operations everywhere.

5. We won’t be doing this in the dark.

As part of the aforementioned collaboration, we’ve set up this site to share our progress and our failures along the way so that others can learn from them, adapt them and spread them as needed.


Where we are now

Right now, we are in the process of selecting the location of our first site. The sort of communities we have in mind would ideally meet the following criteria:

  • Has a population of roughly 60,000 to 300,000
  • Is not part of or close to a major city — we’re looking to cover communities where people work and live
  • Has an engaged citizenry that votes, volunteers and is already focused on making their city a better place
  • Has no or few sources of local news, or recently lost a local news provider

We want to hear your ideas. If you live in a community that is hungry for local news, let me know.

If you want to be a part of what we’re building, drop me a line.

If you’re already working on this problem and want a collaborator, I’m here for you.

I didn’t join The Compass Experiment only to make incremental improvements to the three communities where we’ll be starting new sites. I want to be part of a movement to make local news sustainable everywhere. I hope you’ll join me.

This post was originally published on the Compass Experiment’s Medium site.

Recommended reading: Investigative social media, new ideas and tools

Sorry it’s been so long, but it’s been crazy busy as TBD’s preparing for the holidays and other events. This’ll be a quick one, just a few links I’ve been reading of late. Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks.

Social media roundup

  • How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media – Great ideas from several resources gathered by Vadim Lavrusik at Mashable on how to use social media in investigative reporting and newsroom projects. Includes tips on Crowdmap, Storify, Twitter crowdsourcing, data searches and more. A great post to pass on to the social media haters in your newsroom.
  • RockMelt: The User Manual– If you don’t know about Rockmelt or want to know more on how to use the new social browser, here’s a great guide from the NY Times.
  • 6 innovative uses of Tumblr by newsrooms – The big media companies are only now getting into Tumblr, but there’s a lot of possibilities out there for it.
  • Engaging Facebook fans with clever, conversational updates – Great ideas from Web Up the Newsroom for writing interesting status updates on a media outlet’s Facebook page to drive traffic to content and drive discussion online.
  • In this disturbing bit from FishbowlDC, a Washington Post editor says “crediting the original source of a scoop isn’t “a requirement or even important” because “all news originates from somewhere” and “unless one is taking someone else’s work without attribution (that is, plagiarizing it) any news story should stand on its own and speaks for itself as an original piece of work.” Hm.
  • How News Organizations Are Generating Revenue From Social Media – Another great Mashable rundown of the top ways online media is generating revenue using social media and more to hit new audiences.

On the TBD Front

TBD 1.0 launches, now let the real fun begin

If you’ve been reading here – or really on most any journalism blog of late – you know I’ve been part of a team of excellent journalists who’ve been toiling away the past few months to get TBD off the ground.

TBD Home Page circa 4 am, Launch Day

TBD Home Page circa 4 am, Launch Day

Today is finally the day. Today, TBD.com has launched and all of us who joined this venture with high hopes of shaking up the news business get our chance to sink or swim.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes and take a look at the site. Let me know what you think, either here in the comments, in our live chat today or wherever you tend to post your rants. If you see technical issues, please do us a favor and report them here.

What we put out there today is nowhere near a “finished” product. We’ve said from the beginning that TBD will always be developing and changing as we get new ideas and more information – so consider this TBD 1.0.

I really want to take this opportunity to say I’ve been so lucky as a journalist and as a person to have been able to build this site with these amazing people. I’ve never been so challenged, felt so excited or learned so much in such a short time as I have here. I have had the time of my life putting together this big crazy idea – and I expect it to only get better as we actually get down to the business we all came here to do.

We’ve been getting a lot of press in the lead-up to launch and I expect to see more reviews in the coming days. I’m collecting them here. Let me know if I’ve missed any links.

On making a move and taking new chances

For months now, I have been excitedly following the developing news of Allbritton’s local news site. As the parent company of Politico, many online types have hopes this as-yet-unnamed project can revitalize online news – and maybe give the Washington Post a run for their money.

I’m proud to say that as of today, I’m going to be a part of this exciting and altogether new approach to news. I recently accepted a job to be the site’s social media producer, working with the likes of Jim Brady, Steve Buttry and the site’s rapidly-growing community engagement staff.

So long Camp Washington Chili, hello Ben’s Chili Bowl.

Did I mention I was excited? I also meant terrified.

I’ve had a great ride in my three years at Cincinnati.Com. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really great journalists and brilliant innovators. I lead a comfortable existence here, with my husband working right across the office and lots of friends living close by.

I’m terrified/excited to throw away all I know for a whole new life in a new city and a company with a new way of doing business. I think I’m running out of chances to take chances – and this one just seemed like the best fit possible.

I’m thrilled for the opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the journalism industry – and hopefully do a little bit of teaching myself.

We’ll be out to redefine what it really means to connect with a news audience – and there’s no way we’ll be doing this alone. I encourage my readers and friends in Cincinnati to offer their ideas and advice (and maybe a pint or two?) as I prepare move ahead to the new job. If any of you are from the DC area, please introduce yourselves via social media or in the comments below. I’m sure I’ll need all the tips and ideas you can give me.

It is only with the cooperation and input from local readers that this new project will be able to thrive. I hope you’ll all be along for the ride.

Recommended reading on start-ups, tech & social media

I’ve been all over the place with my reading of late. Here’s a few notable bits I wanted to pass on before this week really jumps off.

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