I’ve been doing some research for an upcoming package of articles about
business models to support citizen journalism (coming soon), and the
other day I interviewed Barry Parr, sole proprietor of “citJ” website Coastsider,
which serves the San Mateo coast in California. I’ll report on his site
in detail when my articles are done, but I heard something interesting
from him that I’d like to pass along now.
Coastsider has found some success as an alternative news source for the
small communities in the area, which are served only by a weekly
newspaper, and covered sparingly by the San Francisco Bay Area metro
newspapers. This is a one-man operation, and Parr does it in spare time
away from his day job as a media analyst for Jupiter Research. (He
works from his home office in Montara.)
There’s not enough revenue coming in for it to be his main career, but
he’s also not taken the effort yet to seek advertising — it’s come in
over the transom — or hire a part-time ad salesperson.
What surprised me is that no one from the Bay Area media nor from any
of the local-news-focused blogging networks has talked to Parr about
partnering or affiliating in some way. What we’ve got right now are a
bunch of independent editor/publishers using the principles of ctiJ to
cover their small towns — which often are communities underserved or
not served at all by traditional media. These are small operations, to
be sure; there’s not much money involved yet (though I think there’s
potential).
So, if you’re a Bay Area newspaper, for instance, and your coverage of
a nearby small community is close to non-existent (except when a major
story breaks there), wouldn’t it make sense to consider allying with a
citJ operation that is
providing local news from that community? (Alternatively, you could set
up your own competing citJ operation to cover the community — though
that could be difficult if someone like Parr already has gained some
traction and visibility in the community.)
Perhaps this will happen eventually. I can’t help but think that
perhaps for now, most mainstream news organizations are still too
skittish about the concept of citJ to ally themselves with independent
citJ publishers who might not meet traditional journalism standards.
