Online Journalism: You can't fight the future

Canadian Association of Journalists conference 2010, Montreal

Online Journalism: You can't fight the future

Panel with Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun; David Beers, founding editor of The Tyee; and Greg Horn, the one-man shop who started and runs Kahnawakenews.com.

From his position overseeing the development of the website and the Vancouver Sun, LaPointe says he watches employees face “profoundly emotional” changes when shifting perspective to accept online media. The employees go from ruling its significance out completely, to backing away from what seems like much more work, to getting discouraged by the small audience. The breakthrough to acceptance only comes with the first positive experience, such as the first time when a reader contacted through Twitter gives a great suggestion. That personal experience is key to a reporter finally seeing the benefits that linking with an online community can bring. Now, he says, community engagement is no longer a frill, and reporters like Kim Bolan, an organized crime reporter, are expected to scroll through the comments their stories generate on the website two or three times a day to make replies and show the writer is listening. They've also done a complete overhaul of their beat system, making people reapply for beats they would like with an outline of how they are going to interact, reach out and publish in online formats. Those new beats will be announced within weeks at the paper.

On the question of traffic, LaPointe says he's much more interested in “engagement metrics,” which take into account retweets and links. The Vancouver Sun paid a high-profile analytics company to study their website readers. LaPointe is expecting that report soon and talks excitedly about the chance to really know who is going to their website and why.

Beers is the founding editor of a regional news website The Tyee, founded several years ago with funding from the labour movement, invested through a trust fund with an editorial firewall between labour and the Beers. The news website continues to run with those funds, plus money from another investor and funds raised from their readers for special projects. (i.e. during a recent election, readers could select an issue and direct funds to increasing coverage of that issue. Afterward, Beers published a detailed account of the spending.) They now run on about $600,000 a year.

The Tyee succeeds despite ignoring all the truism of web publishing, says Beers. They are neither hyper local nor super global, they do long-form and in depth journalism, they don't make editorial decisions based on traffic. But his measure of success, he says, is that they matter, that the stories they write get picked up, affect public policy and expand public understanding. “We want our pieces to go viral, but we want them to go viral to influential people,” he said, then later added that he wonders sometimes if the website hasn't gotten to “egg heady.”

They publish 1,200 to 1,800 word stories with lots of links and a focus on the how's and why's of the news, closer to an analytical news magazine than a continuous reporting of what happened. “The Tyee is all about the how and the why. That's our niche,” he says. “The Internet has unbundled newspapers. I think you're going to see more and more stakeholders in the conversation.”

Horn is a perfect example of that last point. When he lost his job during a changeover at the local paper, he started Kahnawakenews.com with just $150 as a hobby between jobs. He soon garnered a following and now it's turning into a business where it's actually paying bills, he says. Local businesses are buying ads on the site. He serves his own community of 8,000-10,000 and tries to update the website daily with news from around the community. If he sees links to his stories on Facebook, he knows he's doing a good job.

Other links:
Kirk LaPointe's blog on change in the media

Blog post by Elise Stolte,
estolte@thejournal.canwest.com
or follow me on Twitter @estolte