Funding Local News

I recently wrote an email to a few colleagues (one an executive at Google, one an executive at McClatchy Newspapers and one to a fellow I've worked on and off with in various media entities over the years). This post is based on that email.

Just for fun, I worked out a 'thing' that's been running through my head for a few months now. Particularly the last few weeks with the insanity happening with our government.

It's also obvious that the consolidation of the existing private news infrastructure is more than a little problematic. It's become dangerous to our democracy. The far left publication Jacobin actually did a pretty well reasoned and not too far left in it's analysis of the situation in an article published this week titled "Capitalist Finance Is Incompatible With A Free Press'. 

With the Chicago Tribune's publishing company on the verge of being swallowed up by the hedge fund industry, capitalism’s ongoing destruction of the free press through downsizing and asset-stripping has become the number one threat to American democracy.

I believe one of the base issues with the threats to our democracy we see now is a lack of common understanding of what's happening, particularly at a local level, and one of the primary reasons for this is a lack of local news that provides local news, opinion, commentary and investigative reporting as well as connecting local businesses with local consumers.

But you know all this. My guess is you've already had these thoughts and, like I just did, run some numbers.

When I look at what it would take to create a national network of local news entities, it's not cheap, but, it's not THAT expensive either. Not in todays world where Airb-n-b hit's a $100B valuation on day one.

I came up with a cost of around $6.7B a year using a really simple model (simple can be good: occams razor solutions tend to work best).

With that money you could put a local virtual newsroom (no office, all online), like the compass experiment, with real staff in each town, focused on that town and building trust in the system in that town.

I'll bet that either a private consortium of billionaires with a social conscience, large companies with a guilt complex and government, if we positioned it as a key to how you fix our broken social and political system and was essential to saving our democracy (because it damn well is), could put together that kind of money reasonably easily. Either through commitments they make to support it, or funding an endowment ($115B earning 6% would throw off that much each year).

There's about $20 trillion (with a T) sitting, uninvested, right now. $42 trillion in the stock market. All just in the US.

Harvard and Yale, between them, have over $70B in endowment funds, for instance. That's just two institutions.

I know R-------'s doing a lot along these lines with Google, but, I'm not sure just one company can do something like this and have it be trusted by people. Not in todays 'Big Tech is scary' world. I also think the Compass Experiment* is thinking along these lines, but, I don't think a hedge fund owner with it's tendency toward predatory capitalism will have much interest (or capacity) either.

Alternatively, I also think you could fund it by creating a national tax of some sort that we all paid into. It would work out to about $3.58 a month per US worker in the country ($43 a year), assuming about 156M working people (2018 number). That's about what we each pay now for our local public libraries (usually via a tax as well; sales tax in our town. Property tax in many others).

Anyway, I know it's a little nuts. I just wanted to get my thoughts down and see if it even made sense to anyone else. Feel free to ignore this if you think it's too out there.

A quick spreadsheet on what the economics might look like.

Note: everyone did respond and the conversation is ongoing.

I also, still, think the idea of creating a Library Information District that includes a newsroom built into the new 21st century Public Library, is more than a little viable. 

It's titled We Need A New Kind Of Local Community Funded Newspaper - At The Public Library

*Shortly after writing this to them, the Compass Experiment (a collaboration between McClatchy and Google) was disbanded. Apparently, the new hedge fund owners of McClatchy don't like Google and killed off the partnership.

Stepping down at Longmont Public Media

 

I'm the co-founder and have been the general manager at Longmont Public Media for the last year and, even though we had some bumps at the beginning, have deeply enjoyed the experience. 

It was a hell of a year to try and launch a new public access TV and Media makerspace (a global pandemic and all), but, we got it started up, we've got it running with a much better and more flexible technical infrastructure with far more reach (live web streaming, Facebook, YouTube and a ROKU app for smart TV's) and much more community content than was available before. Most importantly though is we have the basics required for long term success in place.

Why leave now? Because, this world of day to day media creation belongs to the next generation, not an old guy like me, so I'm handing off to my co-founder, Sergio Angeles. He'll be taking on the GM role as of Jan 1st, 2021.

He'll do great. Here's a link to the annoucement.

I'm going to call myself retired for awhile. I just had my 63rd birthday and taking some actual time off sounds like a good idea to me.

Scott Converse. Late 2020

The Birth of Longmont Public Media

So, what have I been up to the last few months?

I didn't really write about it here because of all the red tape, NDA's, people involved and, frankly, drama, but our little group of media jammers bid on an RFP to take over our cities public access TV station in mid 2019 and we won.

We took over the Carnegie Library building, where our cities Public Access TV station lives, on Jan 1st, 2020.

Now, after being in existence for nine weeks and starting, pretty much, from scratch, we're making good progress at Longmont Public Media in creating a new kind of public access, educational, government coverage and local news/information media entity here in my hometown.

We've got the cable TV channels at CH8 and Ch880 working nicely as well as live streaming and archiving to our website, we've figured out mobile and remote broadcasting with modern tech, we're now covering all of the various government meetings that affect our civic life here (about 20 councils, boards and commissions each month with video/audio and full transcription services) as well as creating new regular and one-off shows about the community and we're building new membership for a media makerspace model that'll create an 'owned by the community and open to the community' media center for everyone.

This last part is essential. Having a deeply and widely involved community of engaged members is going to be essential to keeping public access media alive and well (funded) into the future.

If you're in the area, drop by and say hello. Our video, podcasting, internet streaming radio and recording studios as well as all our regular open to the public meetings and broadcast operations are at the Carnegie Library Building at 457 4th Ave. in Longmont CO.

We're open during regular hours of M-F 9 am to 5 pm, we have tours every Sat from Noon to 2pm and the space is generally open to the public whenever a supporting member is in the space.

Website:
https://longmontpublicmedia.org/

Watch live:
https://longmontpublicmedia.org/watch/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/longmontpublicmedia

Become an LPM member:
https://longmontpublicmedia.org/membership/

We still operate the Longmont Observer as well, however, there are some changes coming in the near future. As things develop with the Observer, I'll update what's happening there in a future post.

Longer version of this post:  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/media-makerspace-model-public-access-news-information-scott-converse/

Just for the record...

This is just one of those housekeeping things.

I've heard several people take ownership (as in 'I made this') recently of things they may have been involved in but didn't start and in some cases didn't have much involvement with other than being present and watching the action.

If you're interested in who actually started something, look at the state it started in, and go to the Secretary of State website to find out who, actually, created the entity.  Here in Colorado you just go to the SoS website, click on the Business tab, click on 'search business database (under search and file, first bullet), enter the name of the entity, click on Articles of Incorporation, click on Filing history and documents and then click on the actual Articles of Incorporation (the first clickable link at the top). The name of the person who founded the entity is on that document. Often there are additional attached documents that have additional founder's names on them. Check for those as well. These are government records that can't be altered, only added to and amended (which is closely tracked by the Secretary of State agency with each change and amendment listed on the website)

.Here are three examples:

TinkerMill (Longmont's Makerspace).

Startup Longmont (the original startup focused entity in Longmont).

Longmont Startup Week (the first one that started it, done in 2015).

I don't really care much about this, but, I (obviously) care enough to write this post.  It's a bit irritating when you regularly hear from people how someone is taking credit for something they didn't do.