Sep 2, 2010

Color, coverage and confirmation

Just the other day, I told a friend via Twitter not to believe what “they” say, that one really can go home again. By that I meant a return to my native New York City after four years of working the hyperlocal scene in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. I never expected a guy named Lee and his gun-toting, bomb-planting, hostage-taking antics at Discovery Communications would send me back to Silver Spring, if only digitally.

Wednesday afternoon was one long tweet: conversations with friends and former neighbors who work in and around the Discovery building, and retweets of news updates from boots on the ground. Emails and Facebook messages came from larger news organizations, asking for any information I may have had on the suspect or Discovery’s past dealings with him. And I bitched a lot about theories and comments from unnamed sources being passed off as fact (more on that below).

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, and this being the digital age, accolades and criticism of the event’s news coverage surfaced immediately or in real time. Regional news startup TBD.com got well-deserved props for its streaming video and online coverage, with help from its television affiliate WJLA. (Both organizations live under the Allbritton corporate umbrella.) But some of the news coverage (not necessarily that of TBD or WJLA) got gruff from the Asian-American Journalists Association (AAJA), Slate magazine and me:

Was the suspect’s ethnicity relevant? As Wednesday’s events unfolded, the AAJA offered this advice via Twitter: Ethnicity should be reported only when relevant and when that relevance can be explained to the news consumer’s satisfaction. The organization later explained on its website that it objected to “Asian” being the only modifier used to describe the suspected gunman. “It’s doubtful that news organizations would say ‘Black man (or white man) takes hostages.’ This reminder is in that same vein,” the website stated.

I agree, though personally I didn’t see any headlines or tweets describing him only as an Asian gunman. But there was relevance on the hyperlocal level to identifying the suspect as Asian. A lot of Silver Spring residents knew Lee as the village idiot (arguably one of many) who two years ago staged a one-man protest against Discovery Communications and then paid homeless men and women to join his picket line. That same week, he started a near-stampede along the neighborhood’s main shopping strip as he tossed cash in the air to evade his paid-to-picket employees.

Describing the suspect as Asian was germane to the story and a big wink-wink, nudge-nudge to Silver Spring residents. Neighbors knew exactly who took hostages that day — there aren’t too many Asian men with an anti-Discovery agenda running around town — without anyone even saying the dude’s name, and without confirmation from the police (more on that below). Read the rest of this entry »

Sep 1, 2010

The is and ain’t of hyperlocal news (and pizza)

Some thought has been bounced around the internets these past two weeks on what it means to be hyperlocal.

Sarah Hartley, editor of Guardian Local in the United Kingdom, last week characterized hyperlocal news in ten bullet points. Some of them were on the mark: participation from the author and the community, a willingness to link to outside sources, a spirit of independent coverage, and (sadly) a general state of shit brokeness. Hartley also threw in the characteristic of “opinion blended with fact,” though I’ll argue the act of weighing another’s objectivity is a subjective exercise.

Hartley’s blog post is worth the read, though I’m tired of trying to define the nature of hyperlocal news. It is what it is, and it ain’t what it ain’t.

However, I’m in a twist over what Barb Palser, director of digital media with McGraw-Hill Broadcasting, called the hazards of hyperlocal. In the June/July issue of American Journalism Review, Palser described hyperlocal news as “difficult, expensive and not for the faint of heart.” The perceived low demand for hyperlocal news, plus market saturation by way of existing news outlets, startup websites, blogs and social-networking sites, makes it nothing more than a financially unsustainable labor of love, she wrote.

Is hyperlocal news difficult and not for the faint of heart? Yes. No one said it would be easy. Is it expensive? When one considers the cost of labor — I’m talking about the true cost, including all those hours that hyperlocalists put in for free — then yes, it can get expensive.

But those descriptors apply to any new business or industry. Replace “hyperlocal news” with “pizzeria” and the same holds true. Pizza’s a tough gig and can get expensive. The perceived low demand for fat-laden cheese on top of high-sodium sauce and carbohydrate-rich crust, plus market saturation by way of pizzerias and other fast food eateries on every city block, amounts to a financially unsustainable blah blah blah.

It’s not about the quantity and quick availability of that pizza — er, hyperlocal news. It’s about quality. Urban dwellers (and probably some suburbanites) have myriad options when it comes to where they spend their time and money. Still, they gravitate towards the service or product they feel is best, even if more convenient or cheaper options exist. It’s what I’ve previously called the “emotional value” that a business lends to its community, and with careful business planning that fits the local microeconomy, I believe it can be profitable.

Is being the best at one’s business difficult and not for the faint of heart? Hellz yeah. Can it get expensive? Perhaps. But there’s always demand for a better product — pizza, hyperlocal news, whatever. It’s up to entrepreneurs to supply that better product.

Photos courtesy of Flickr user Adam Kuban.

Aug 25, 2010

Getting a hyperlocal grip on international news

The other day I whined about the challenges of covering a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual beat. Such diversity is a blessing (and I don’t use that term often), but all those story angles can shmear thin an already small newsroom.

It’s something that’s bugged me for a while, though it clocked me square in the face this summer. With a sizable Pakistani-American community here, larger news organizations — namely The Christian Science Monitor and Al Jazeera — tapped residents for their takes on relief efforts in Pakistan’s flood zones, development of a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center site, and the arrest of Faisal Shazad, a Pakistani American who confessed to planting a car bomb in Times Square.

All of them were good angles on national and international news stories, and they offered insight into one segment of the neighborhood. But as a hyperlocalist, would such stories be within the scope of my publication? Would I have to write similar stories around the zillion other immigrant groups in my hood — the Tibetan Americans’ take on China’s activity in their homeland? The Venezuelan-American reaction to whatever Hugo Chavez has to say? And on and on.

It’s enough to drive a hyperlocalist insane.

That’s when the Poynter Institute’s News University came to my rescue. (For the uninitiated, News U offers journalists online training, some of it free, much of it cheap, nearly all of it good.) Its free, self-guided seminar called “Reporting Global Issues Locally” offered tips on how to tie international events with local issues, without driving a newsroom into the ground and without necessarily focusing on only one immigrant group.

First, the course suggested taking inventory of a beat’s ethnic groups, spoken languages and immigrants’ countries of origin. Done. Next was an inventory of a beat’s big industries. In my case, those are restaurants and specialty food shops; grooming services and general retail; medical services, thanks to a nearby hospital; residential real estate; and automotive sales and repairs.

Then the magic happened. The course listed five international-news topics that could influence news on a local level:

  • The wars and national security
  • Business and the economy
  • Immigration
  • Health and the environment
  • A catch-all heading that included religion, education, culture and sports.

And instead of just tying international stories with the local immigrants’ reactions, the course illustrated how these international events can truly impact everyone in the hood, regardless of their ethnic or national backgrounds. For example, international trade tariffs and product recalls can affect sales at local retail shops, regardless of which segment of the community patronizes those shops. Immigration reform can alter hiring practices across all local industries, whether it’s food servers for the hood’s restaurants, or doctors and nurses at the nearby hospital and its satellite facilities.

In other words, it’s not about the hyperlocal angle on international news. Instead, it’s about the international angle on hyperlocal news. Despite the neighborhood’s global roots, the fact is it is one cohesive neighborhood. Its residents might not share a common heritage or language, but they share the immigrant experience, life as Americans (legally or not), and in the case of my new beat, life as New Yorkers.

The course also discusses possible sources of information, but I haven’t gotten that far into it yet. I’ll save that post for when I get around to it.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bondidwhat.

Aug 23, 2010

Whoever said it was a small world was a liar.

Getting my business chops together is a slow, painful process, but it’s happening. I’ve been reading about profit-and-loss statements and recently received free (yay!) legal advice on business structures. A summary of what I’ve learned will appear on this blog eventually.

While that’s cooking, I’ve started learning more about my hyperlocal beat and the niche my future online publication might fill. First, the statistical low down:

The neighborhood covers an area of about 1.5 square miles and contains more than 71,000 residents, says the 2000 Census. Sixty-six percent were foreign born and 80 percent speak something other than English at home — and I’m not just talking about Central and South American immigrants speaking Spanish. From personal observation, I’ve seen and heard people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; Nepal and Tibet; Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela; Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe; and a smattering from southern China, Thailand, South Korea and The Philippines.

Compare that with the beat my former publication covered: 22,000 people living within one square mile. Most of them were born in the United States, spoke English at home, and were either white or black. That small area and common language made coverage easy, and because most of the foreign-born residents were either Central American or Northeast African, it trimmed the number of international tracks I had to follow for those “local reaction to events back home” stories.

The diversity that makes my new hyperlocal beat so beautiful means I’ll need creative ways to gather, report and distribute the news. Right now, reporting and distribution seem to be the easy parts, as I’ve had some thoughts on that previously. The news-gathering part, on the other hand, will kick my ass.

Brainstorming on how to avoid that ass kicking will occur in the next few posts.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Samantha Decker.

Aug 18, 2010

Even the unemployed need a vacation.

Summer is generally a slow time in the news business, partly because the big “news makers” like legislators are in recess. But I’ll admit that some of that slowdown comes from apathy and burnout on my end. So while the fat cats are away, The Hyperlocalist shall play!

I spent two weeks putzing around the sweltering Southeast, only to return to a steamy and smelly New York. I cloistered myself in the bedroom, the only room in my apartment with air conditioning, while the computer sat dormant in the stuffy living room. Twitter and email messages went unanswered. Articles accumulated in my RSS reader, only to be flushed away unread.

Instead, I downloaded “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” onto my e-reader. I watched “Days of Our Lives.” I discovered the indoor pool at the local Y. And I watched the Mets piss away yet another season. With the exception of the latter, it was all good.

Perhaps the best thing about unplugging was the realization that I had become too much of a thinker and a talker and not enough of a doer. Twitter and the blogosphere are littered with schmucks like me who yap about potential revenue streams and new technology, but yap isn’t worth a damn without test driving it for oneself. So I’ve gotten back on the entrepreneurial wagon.

First, I set a loose timeline for my new hyperlocal-news publication, one that gives me time to work on my business plan (as well as some personal obligations) while slowly making my company’s presence known in the community. Next, I cracked open an accounting textbook to learn about balance sheets and profit-and-loss (also known as P&L or income) statements. Also, I picked up a few domain names, a Twitter handle, and a clean WordPress theme.

It was about time I moved my ass. And it’s time for other journopreneurs to do the same. Worried that running a news business isn’t the right choice? Feeling uneasy about where and when the money will come? Sweating the big-box competition?

DON’T. Just don’t.

Being an entrepreneur means sticking one’s neck out, knowing well that the ax might fall right on it. Sometimes, one swift blow is enough to send that skull rolling directly into the basket. Other times, it takes a couple of whacks with a dull blade to sever a now-useless appendage from its spinal stem. But for the lucky, that ax misses completely swing after swing, and the execution is stayed.

Admittedly, I’ve got a vulnerable neck, but I’m sticking it out as far as my vertebrae will reach. It’s the only way to know whether I get to keep my head.

Do the same.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Randy Son of Robert.

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