The Journalism that Matters conference handed TIME magazine the sort of kicker to its “Assignment Detroit Project” Sunday that newsmagazines usually can only dream of.
Three conference participants — Detroiters Juanita Anderson, Alicia Buggs and Arthur Leggett — proposed that TIME turn over the house it bought on the city’s east side to locals committed to pursuing the story of “the real Detroit.”
The group, which acknowledged that it came up with the idea only 24 hours before, has no track record in producing community news. (Monday update: In an e-mail exchange with Anderson, I learned that she served as executive producer of Detroit Black Journal 1982-1988 for public television in Detroit and as series producer for Say Brother 1988-1993 for WGBH in Boston, winning seven Emmys in the process.)
Whether these individuals or a larger or different group ends up with the house strikes me as less important than the opportunity they’ve presented to TIME. Finding the right group of successors would be tricky, but what better legacy for “Assignment Detroit” than to encourage enterprising community reporting going forward?
Leggett, who works in advertising, said, “We’re not looking for a handout, we’re looking for a hand-up — or rather, better yet, a handoff.” He said his group would establish itself as a nonprofit organization and would welcome the collaboration of other community groups, as well as mainstream news organizations such as the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.
As part of a pitch session at the close of the four-day conference, Anderson, Leggett and Buggs mocked up a TIME cover to show how it would approach the Detroit story differently than the magazine has.
The group also displayed the cover to the Oct. 5, 2009 TIME story about Detroit that Anderson, an assistant professor at Wayne State University, dismissed as “a dismal failure.”
TIME’s coverage of Detroit — produced with staff reports by various Time Inc. magazines supplemented by contract bloggers, high school students and others — has drawn mixed reviews. Its innovative approach to an important American story has been hailed as enterprising by some, but some of its coverage has been attacked as misleading and excessively negative.
Gafke was among several coaches providing feedback to the pitches Sunday. Others included Jennifer 8. Lee, the author and former New York Times reporter, and J-Lab director Jan Schaffer.
Lee pointed out that while TIME may like the idea of giving its house to a community news group “in principle,” its executives will need to be persuaded that the recipient group has a strong likelihood of success. She advised Anderson and her colleagues to begin establishing a strong track record as quickly as possible.
Although I heard about the pitch for the TIME house on Saturday, I was enroute to the airport during Sunday’s pitch sessions. Thanks to the conference Twitter feed, JTM organizer Bill Densmore’s relentless documentation and an audio/video recording, I was able to get the gist of the proceedings. (The TIME pitch comes at about 1 hour, 46 minutes into the above recording.)
Journalism that Matters has been conducting conferences around the country in recent years aimed at encouraging community journalism. The Detroit gathering included sessions on a wide range of topics, including this one exploring some of what it takes to sustain community news start-ups.
JTM Detroit included just under 100 registered participants, including community journalists, former news organization staffers, professors and activists — but very few current reporters or editors for mainstream news organizations.
Among the participants was Brian Steffens, executive director of the National Newspaper Association, the organization of 2,700 mostly smaller dailies and weeklies around the country.
As important as it is to encourage the creation of new sources of news in the nation’s communities, Steffens urged journalism entrepreneurs to view his member newspapers as potential partners in community story-telling.
Schaffer’s J-Lab is encouraging just those kinds of partnerships in five cities around the country. The New York Times is teaming up with journalism students. Wouldn’t it be interesting if community news entrepreneurs found a way to partner not only with local weeklies and metro dailies but with a giant like Time Inc. as well?
