Rick Burnes' Blog

Don't Ask How to Save the Globe, Ask How to Replace It

This morning the Boston Business Journal reported that the Boston Foundation is discussing ways to help finance The Globe if it is shut down by The New York Times. It's a little unclear what the nature of the conversations are, but they seem to reflect the gist of conversations happening in public on the web: "Quick -- the sky is falling! How can we save the Globe?!?"

This is the wrong approach.

We shouldn't be asking how to save The Globe, we should be asking how we'll build its replacement.

The Globe has served us for years, but its financial dysfunction is staggering. It doesn't work any more. Period.

Instead of trying to prop up this dying system, our community needs to come up with new ways to make information public, share it and discuss it.

We're already seeing online substitutes for some pieces of The Globe. Red Sox commentary is ubiquitous, sites like Blue Mass Group have rich political discourse and there is a fair amount of local arts coverage on the web. Of course, it's not clear what will replace The Globe's hard news and investigative journalism. I believe there will be less need for original hard news reporting as primary sources do the reporting themselves, but there will still be a big hole, without a clear way to fill it.

There is one thing we can do: Experiment.

Instead of pouring one huge chunk of money into The Globe, The Boston Foundation should fund community news experiments. They should fund people like Adam Gaffin who are highlighting local blogs, sites like Somerville Voices that are organizing community discussions and local versions of the Sunlight Foundation that are helping make government data public.

The Knight Foundation's News Challenge is a great model for this approach. If the Boston Foundation started giving away grants to creative local news experiments, their inboxes would be stuffed with great ideas.

We're in the midst of a revolution. Blood is being shed. It's nasty out there.

The good news is that once we get through this rough patch, we're going to have an information ecosystem that is far richer, more diverse and more truthful than the one we have now. I'm looking forward to it.

P.S. If this issue is important to you, these recent posts by Clay Shirky and Steven Johnson are required reading.

Your New Neighborhood Newspaper? Soon, a Real Estate Site.

One of these days smart real estate folks are going to start turning their websites into local news sites.

It will help them with their SEO.

And it will help create the kind of community people want to live in.

Paul Roetzer, founder and president of PR 20/20, is headed in this direction with a project he's working on in Cleveland.

It's a downtown development called The Avenue District. Its website has a blog, videos and lots of updates on the neighborhood and construction.

It's a great start. I hope they do keep going.

They could talk more about what's happening in the neighborhood outside the development. They could talk about local politics, community development, education, small businesses and on and on.

It could become a veritable hyperlocal blog.

If they create a useful, vital neighborhood site -- something that people rely on like the Davis Square Live Journal or Baristanet -- the site will get inbound links, and it will rise in the search results. The development and the community will thrive.

Real Estate folks will doubt such a site is worth the investment; newspaper folks will doubt its quality.

But it makes sense.  Sooner or later, it will happen. And it will be a good thing.

A World in Which City Councilors Blog

"What about unbaised reporting?"

That's what a good friend asked a few weeks ago as I was explaining the vision underlying 9Neighbors.

We're building 9Neighbors for a world in which city councilors blog, community activists promote their agenda on YouTube (er, Seesmic), and mothers publish photos from the sidelines of their kids' soccer games.

9Neighbors will help community members find the best of all this new local media.

As I explained our vision, my friend, a journalist, saw a catch: If the articles, photos and videos through which a community learns about itself come directly from that community, the information will be biased.

That's true, and it would be a problem if these articles, photos and videos were traditional news reports. But they're not. They're conversation, and in conversation we call bias opinion and expect it.

Conversation won't replace thorough, unbaised reporting, but it's a great alternative in situations where professional reporting is not feasible.

The planned extension of Boston's subway to Somerville is a great example. The Globe, The Somerville Journal and The Somerville News are all covering the issue in helpful, broad strokes. It's unrealistic to expect more from them.

Those who want to understand the issue in more detail are heading to the listserve of the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership. Everybody who posts on the STEP list has an opinion, and that's good. Members of the community develop identities, issues surface, they're hashed out honestly, and the community moves forward.

Eventually, the discussion that's happening on the STEP list will happen openly, across the web on all the community's issues. Smart local leaders will weigh in on their blogs, businesses will explain what the changes mean to them on their sites, conversations will begin, and issues will become clearer.

None of this will replace thorough, unbiased, professional reporting. It will just provide information on a level of detail that is not feasible for reporters. It will be rich, honest information that was previously unavailable, and it will be great to have.