INDenverTimes Troubles May Signal Difficulty of Replicating Newsrooms

Funders of INDenverTimes — the independent online-only startup founded by former employees of the Rocky Mountain News — announced today they will not move forward under the original business model but will explore a different model for the site, without some of the journalists who created it.

INDenverTimes lists a newsroom staff of 31, plus 18 contributors. To me, that lineup sounds terribly ambitious for a startup media venture — especially one that apparently planned to rely mainly on subscriptions for premium content and interaction as a business model.

And, it takes more than reporters and editors to run a news outlet. You also need revenue-side people (at least for marketing subscriptions, if not selling advertising) and support staff (bookkeepers and customer service, at least).

In contrast to INDenverTimes, the now-online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer lists a content staff of 19, plus a Web developer and an accounting coordinator. Also, the P-I remains part of Hearst Corp., and thus probably gets at least some corporate support.

Nearly 12 hours after the news of the funder pullout broke, INDenverTimes published its own story about the setback. This unbylined story said: “Certain
 members 
of
 the 
INDT
 newsroom
 group … 
intend
 to
 seek
 backers
 for
 their
 original
 vision
 of
 a
 robustly
 staffed
 online 
newsroom.”

It seems to me that if you want to do an independent media startup, a “robustly staffed online newsroom” is probably not a constructive starting point from a business perspective. A startup is not a jobs program. It might be more helpful to not try too hard to recreate the function, structure, and content of an established, large organization with a corporate parent. Instead, it makes more sense to start with what you can realistically do with the money that’s available.

For many experienced journalists, this involves a significant step outside their comfort zone.

So as much as I’d love to see all those journalists gainfully employed reporting Denver-area news, the more I look into INDenverTimes the more it seems like a nostalgic Rocky revival than a business-minded startup.

It’ll be interesting to see how hitting this financial obstacle causes the project leaders to revise their vision — especially the business and staff sides.

(Jim Romenesko provides the background and timeline of InDenverTimes.)