What has "New Media" done for us?

[editor]

Today I was surfing around looking for more information about another one of my favorite newspapers that's filed for bankruptcy when I came across a web site that strives to emulate a newspaper of the same locality.

In it I found an article where some PR flack was complaining that with the demise of local media, reporters are too busy reporting on actual local news to listen to him pitch whatever his latest client is selling. Further, he came across a bit of information that WUSA/Washington is now having its reporters shoot, write, and edit their own pieces. He was aghast because this would take them even further away from listening to his public relations drivel, and he stated his worry that the idea might spread nationwide.

Since I know a little bit about the media I dusted off my soap box and left a response. Since I own a web site I decided to post the response here as well. For some reason I feel like listening to myself talk today.

--8<-------------

You think that one-person news crews is a trend that will go nationwide? Where have you been for the last 20 years? One-man-bands (that's what they're called in the industry) have been the norm in most small to medium markets since the demise of uMatic tape. There are hundreds of stations already doing it. The trend isn't that it's going to spread nationwide, but that it's going to infiltrate the larger markets where the unions have worked hard to keep them out for years. They're already in use on the 24-hour news channel in Chicago (CLTV). New York (NY1) probably has them, too.

I share your concern about the implosion of newspapers, though. Without newspapers where will bloggers get their information? Who will tell them what's going on around the world?

For all the internet hype about "new media" versus "old media" certain facts remain -- without strong traditional media organizations at both the national and local level, the civil rights of the individual are at risk.

How many newspaper and TV reporters have gone to jail or worse to preserve the freedoms enjoyed by average citizens? Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

How many bloggers have done the same? Zero.

Without the large media groups and their lawyers who will take on local and national governments doing wrong, there will be no freedom of the press for bloggers or anyone else.

Already local governments around the country make it difficult or impossible for people to get access to information they have every right to know. With the demise of local media these governments are becoming more and more arrogant because there are fewer and fewer watchdogs.

And what are the bloggers doing about it? Sitting around their mother's basements Twittering each other about how great it is that another newspaper went bankrupt.

Thanks for nothing, guys.

[crunchtastic]

I applaud you for refusing to jump on the bandwagon of flogging the 'old media' for actually reporting news as opposed to 'providing content'. The PR-as-news phenomenon is loathesome. I'd hate to think how many people can't tell the difference. In a vacuum where news outlets have minutes to fill and reduced staff, it was bound to happen, I guess.

Bloggers? Good ones are so few and far between. IMO the overwhelming majority are bottom feeders. Lifting someone else's news or conversation and adding a pithy comment or two does not constitute writing. It does not, anymore than playing guitar hero makes one a musician, or mastering Final Cut Pro makes one a filmmaker.

How many actually investigate, expose, study, or do anything to actually further the cause of free speech? Dissimenate useful information? Spur action? There is a huge difference between digital gossip and actual reporting. Many will claim Obama's victory was due in part to the new media and the countless bloggers spreading the word. It was not. It was bought and paid for by a million dollar machine like any other political victory.

I guess you can tell from this post how tired I am of all the noise out there. Empty media calories.

[editor]

I applaud you for refusing to jump on the bandwagon of flogging the 'old media' for actually reporting news as opposed to 'providing content'. The PR-as-news phenomenon is loathesome. I'd hate to think how many people can't tell the difference. In a vacuum where news outlets have minutes to fill and reduced staff, it was bound to happen, I guess.

Bloggers? Good ones are so few and far between. IMO the overwhelming majority are bottom feeders. Lifting someone else's news or conversation and adding a pithy comment or two does not constitute writing. It does not, anymore than playing guitar hero makes one a musician, or mastering Final Cut Pro makes one a filmmaker.

How many actually investigate, expose, study, or do anything to actually further the cause of free speech? Dissimenate useful information? Spur action? There is a huge difference between digital gossip and actual reporting. Many will claim Obama's victory was due in part to the new media and the countless bloggers spreading the word. It was not. It was bought and paid for by a million dollar machine like any other political victory.

I guess you can tell from this post how tired I am of all the noise out there. Empty media calories.

I think in part this also parallels the tug-of-war between bandwidth and content.

It used to be that starting a newspaper was expensive (low bandwidth), so for the most part only the best content got published. Then printing and typesetting technology costs came down and pretty much anyone with a couple of business partners could afford to start one. But there wasn't enough good content to fill it, so you ended up with many crappy newspapers and a few good ones.

It used to be that running a radio station was expensive (low bandwidth) and there were limited frequencies available (also low bandwidth). But the stations we had from the 50's to the 80's are regarded as the best of breed (high quality content). Then changes in the law and advances in technology made it cheaper to own a radio station, and many new stations were put on the air (high bandwidth), but they mostly duplicated each other and the quality is widely regarded as terrible (no new content).

Back when we had four or five TV channels, the content was considered high quality. Heck, most of the old shows are still on the air today. But then cable and satellite exploded, and there were thousands of channels, but guess what -- nothing to show on them. Low quality programs filled in the spaces, and still do. The shift to digital cable has given us more channels than ever, but fewer people are watching cable and satellite TV because the content is low quality.

The same thing happened with internet media. It used to be hard and expensive to run a web site. There were sites like Slate and others that put out high-quality content. Then blogging got easy and cheap. On some blog sites it's even automated. But the content is low quality.

History repeats itself.

Web sites like Gizmodo and Engadget are among the worst online offenders. The content is almost exclusively press release reprints and rumors from other sites, sprinkled with pithy comments so they can pretend to be cool. It's not journalism. Heck, it's not even really blogging since no original thought it put into it. But so few people can tell the difference between a web site that contains good journalism and one that's pushing press releases for clicks that the bad ones rise to the top.

Interestingly, while papers are dying, newspaper readership is actually up. More people read their local newspaper these days than at any other time in a decade. They're just reading it on the internet instead of in dead tree form.

The newspapers would be happy to make the transition from print to online, and it's one they've been preparing for for years. But the problem is that online media doesn't pay. You can't get enough clicks and hits and eyeballs looking at your web site to support a room full of veteran reporters. It's not that the newspaper business model is broken, it's that the internet is still too young to generate much money for content providers. All of the big money-makers on the internet (Google, Cisco, Yahoo!, eBay, etc...) aren't content providers or content consumers -- they're just the middle men, taking a slice of the action from both sides.

[TexasVines]

newspapers killed themselves with a total LACK of local news....with the internet I can find the same AP story on 500 sites what do I need the newspaper for to reprint it like their "analysis" (from someone 1,000 miles from me) represents what I or most people I know think

business "reporting" is the biggest example I can think of because it is just the same stories about layoffs and the poor economy for people 1,000s of miles away in an industry that was never here or anywhere near here.....meanwhile I can find what is going on with local business on sites like this or from bloggers

the chron would do well to pick up a site like this.....hire some people in various areas of town like The Heights, Mid Town, Memorial, West Houston, Woodlands, Kingwood, Sugarland ect. to actually write and prepare NEWS about what is going on in THEIR area.....I know people are being shot and killed in new orleans every day and no one there (especially chocolate idiot) seems to care so why do I.....I would be much more interested in REAL news about what happened in The Heights the other night than just another riot at a notorious big screening in CT

sports (which seems to be what holds most local papers up) is the last thing left that news papers report on locally and even that is falling to crap as they ignore it or AP it up with just another fact less, meaningless, blab with not real content

there are people on sites like this that spend HOURS preparing FREE information that a newspaper can't touch and I can only imagine what they could pull off if they were actually getting paid something to do it

newspapers are stuck in an old model of a guy in a hat working full time at a desk and typewriter actually getting out there and "scooping" something when we can get all the gloom and doom and the mindless obama butt licking from 5,000 "sources"

how about hiring a few people that are stay at home moms or dads, self employed, retired, ect. and paying them something worthwhile and maybe even giving them a "benefits" pool to really lure them in and then turn them loose to find a decent restaurant in Katy (for all those that refuse to eat at a chain for some reason) or to get a REAL story on what is up in Galveston instead of some report from an idiot like geraldo who has been to Galveston one time in his life....pay the people by the piece/story or pay them based on "hits" or just tell them what they need to produce per day/week/month and then turn them loose to actually have some creativity to develop something people care about

I bet there are 50 people on this site alone that could develop some worthwhile content twice a week and would do it for $1,000 a month, expenses, some equipment, and some benefits....maybe over time some could be full time or some even shift to $500 a month....and the "full timers" would be steering the overall group and focus of the content

just think how many things on this site just today we all learned about (like the former Astroworld site plans that will never take off) that are much more interesting than 99% of the crap in chron.com

hell for $200,000 a month plus benefits, expenses, and equipment you could have 200 people out there giving info on something people in HOUSTON actually care about.....if $1,000 is not enough then even $3,000 a month would be $600K in salaries for 200 people a month running around delivering 200 stories a week and then toss in a few full timers and cut and pasters for the AP crap and you just spanked the chron into the grave next to the post

I know there are people that would do it for $3,000 a month and $200 in gas and a car write off and some meals....and then a few could even "meet people" if they wanted to like at HAIF happy hours and get more story ideas and really develop a COMMUNITY again instead of a rag with some local sports scores and AP retreads

[20thStDad]

I haven't been able to get into blogs for a lot of the reasons stated above - it's simply someone's commentary, there is no news. Or worse yet, it's just plain social commentary not even centered around new. Don't care about some blogger's bad date or how they got cut off while driving.

I also agree about sports being the overwhelming majority of the truly local content, at least in the Baton Rouge paper that I was used to.

I scan internet news headlines (chron.com, cnn.com), but don't often click on and read a full story. I've found that on cnn, half of the articles are just excerpts from Money Magazine, Time, or SI, just a marketing attempt for cnn's partners. As for chron.com, 75% of the real articles I click on there are AP stories. It's usually obvious when it's a local artical because it's 2 paragraphs and consists of a short description of an incident that occured in southwest Houston.

We just ordered the Sunday Chronicle, mostly for financial reasons because we'll easily save more than $1.25 per week with the coupons. I like the puzzles too, but I plan to try to learn the chron better and hopefully will get some real news out of it.

[TexasVines]

It's usually obvious when it's a local artical because it's 2 paragraphs and consists of a short description of an incident that occured in southwest Houston.

We just ordered the Sunday Chronicle, mostly for financial reasons because we'll easily save more than $1.25 per week with the coupons. I like the puzzles too, but I plan to try to learn the chron better and hopefully will get some real news out of it.

sounds to me you have learned the chron to nearly the max of it's usefulness unless you have a pet bird that needs a cage liner or do a lot of shipping and need packing materials

[20thStDad]

Just wanted to add one thing, I put bloggers at the same level as email forwards. One of my MIL is constantly forwarding my wife the latest scare-email about what company to avoid or whatever. Well, those, between the ones that ask you to forward to 10 people and you'll spread a trojan horse have good luck forever. Makes me angry.

Anyway, bloggers are no better than spam is my point.

[crunchtastic]

how about hiring a few people that are stay at home moms or dads, self employed, retired, ect. and paying them something worthwhile and maybe even giving them a "benefits" pool to really lure them in and then turn them loose to find a decent restaurant in Katy (for all those that refuse to eat at a chain for some reason) or to get a REAL story on what is up in Galveston instead of some report from an idiot like geraldo who has been to Galveston one time in his life....pay the people by the piece/story or pay them based on "hits" or just tell them what they need to produce per day/week/month and then turn them loose to actually have some creativity to develop something people care about

Ack! Paying amatuers to 'give info'? This is where I have to go into full snob mode. Forget not being able to write properly, untrained writers don't know how to source anything. And if you can't source it, it's either your opinion or hearsay, and therefore, not news. Who knows, perhaps some untrained yet intrepid geezer really knows how to develop sources and interview people and write a story that's truthful and correct and illuminating, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I totally agree that good local coverage is increasingly a thing of the past. It takes training and skill and experience. Sadly, the news media increasingly won't pay for that kind of skill. The world of journalism needs another Bob Woodward, or HST, circa 70s.

It really, really, does not need another earnest SAHM telling the public about a new restaurant in Katy. There are already a half dozen helpful community bloggers in the middle of chron.com's home page, for chrissakes. I cannot believe that paying them for submissions is going to step up the quality or relevance of the content.

[sevfiv]

I had to give some thought about where I really get my "news"...

I have the Chronicle and local television stations on live bookmark RSS, but like 20thstreet mentioned, I usually just scan the headlines. Sometimes I give in and click on who/where/how a drunk driver vehicularly (new word?) manslaughtered a family, but geez.

I also get the daily emails from the New York Times and Houston Business Journal, but as someone pointed out to me, I think I get most of my news from HAIF...!

As far as blogging, it is about content, sources, and analysis. I think there are a handful of blogs that do well - imo, Arianna Huffington has done a decent job at pooling together authors to post blog entries about current events.. For the most part, though, I steer clear.

For local stuff, Houstonist has good content, and the rest of the blogs I read are strictly entertainment/hobby (food-related, funny, etc).

[TexasVines]

Ack! Paying amatuers to 'give info'? This is where I have to go into full snob mode. Forget not being able to write properly, untrained writers don't know how to source anything. And if you can't source it, it's either your opinion or hearsay, and therefore, not news. Who knows, perhaps some untrained yet intrepid geezer really knows how to develop sources and interview people and write a story that's truthful and correct and illuminating, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I totally agree that good local coverage is increasingly a thing of the past. It takes training and skill and experience. Sadly, the news media increasingly won't pay for that kind of skill. The world of journalism needs another Bob Woodward, or HST, circa 70s.

It really, really, does not need another earnest SAHM telling the public about a new restaurant in Katy. There are already a half dozen helpful community bloggers in the middle of chron.com's home page, for chrissakes. I cannot believe that paying them for submissions is going to step up the quality or relevance of the content.

who said amateurs....there are plenty of people with English, journalism, communications, or business degrees out there

and are you saying this site alone does not have plenty of quality well sourced info even if it has grammar or spelling errors.....you can always hire someone to edit it.....and probably edit it better than the chron

[editor]

business "reporting" is the biggest example I can think of because it is just the same stories about layoffs and the poor economy for people 1,000s of miles away in an industry that was never here or anywhere near here.

So, you only buy stock in companies that are down the street? Your 401(k) portfolio is only invested in companies in the same city as you? The company you work for doesn't buy any raw materials from outside the city, and doesn't sell its finished products to companies outside of your own ZIP code? The problem isn't the business reporting. The problem is a lack of understanding on your part of why it's important.

....meanwhile I can find what is going on with local business on sites like this or from bloggers

Who get it from the local newspapers.

the chron would do well to pick up a site like this.....hire some people in various areas of town like The Heights, Mid Town, Memorial, West Houston, Woodlands, Kingwood, Sugarland ect. to actually write and prepare NEWS about what is going on in THEIR area.....I know people are being shot and killed in new orleans every day and no one there (especially chocolate idiot) seems to care so why do I.....I would be much more interested in REAL news about what happened in The Heights the other night than just another riot at a notorious big screening in CT

You seem to misunderstand the costs involved.

Hiring a reporter to chase down shootings in your neighborhood: $100k (including benefits).

Reprinting a wire service story in the entertainment section: $0.

Again, there appears to be a reader problem. You are mistaking "entertainment" in the entertainment section for news from the news section. They're not the same thing.

there are people on sites like this that spend HOURS preparing FREE information that a newspaper can't touch and I can only imagine what they could pull off if they were actually getting paid something to do it

The difference is that newspapers have to find sources and documentation for everything. Internet postings can be truthful or not. Correct or incorrect. Insightful or misinterpreted. Writing is not journalism. It is a failure of the educational system that you can't tell the difference.

newspapers are stuck in an old model of a guy in a hat working full time at a desk and typewriter actually getting out there and "scooping" something when we can get all the gloom and doom and the mindless obama butt licking from 5,000 "sources"

I'm not sure what this sentence means. It seems contradictory.

how about hiring a few people that are stay at home moms or dads, self employed, retired, ect. and paying them something worthwhile and maybe even giving them a "benefits" pool to really lure them in and then turn them loose to find a decent restaurant in Katy (for all those that refuse to eat at a chain for some reason) or to get a REAL story on what is up in Galveston instead of some report from an idiot like geraldo who has been to Galveston one time in his life....pay the people by the piece/story or pay them based on "hits" or just tell them what they need to produce per day/week/month and then turn them loose to actually have some creativity to develop something people care about

These exist. They're called "stringers."

I bet there are 50 people on this site alone that could develop some worthwhile content twice a week and would do it for $1,000 a month, expenses, some equipment, and some benefits....maybe over time some could be full time or some even shift to $500 a month....and the "full timers" would be steering the overall group and focus of the content

$12k/year + expenses + equipment + benefits. How is that different that hiring a cheap reporter right out of college?

just think how many things on this site just today we all learned about (like the former Astroworld site plans that will never take off) that are much more interesting than 99% of the crap in chron.com

The items on this forum appeal to a particular group that seeks out this kind of information. It is not interesting to 99% of the populace.

What you seem to forget is that the Chronicle, like the television stations, is a mass medium. It is not intended or designed to cater to an individual, but rather to the largest number of people possible within its service area. If you want someone to follow you around and report on the things that are only of interest to you, then you are free to hire your own reporting staff to accomplish that goal.

hell for $200,000 a month plus benefits, expenses, and equipment you could have 200 people out there giving info on something people in HOUSTON actually care about.....if $1,000 is not enough then even $3,000 a month would be $600K in salaries for 200 people a month running around delivering 200 stories a week and then toss in a few full timers and cut and pasters for the AP crap and you just spanked the chron into the grave next to the post

No, you haven't. $600,000 + equipment (another $500,000) + benefits (another $600,000) + expenses (another $200,000). By your own tally, that's nearly two million dollars a month. But you've forgotten important details:

• An office to put all this together: $50,000/month
  
• Business managers, accountants, clerical staff: $50,000/month
  
• AP membership: The Chron probably pays about $1 million/year. Let's pretend we can get it for $360,000
  
• Web site (including staff to run it): $80,000/month
  
• Copy editors: $100,000/month
  
• Photo editors: $50,000/month
  
• Sales staff: $100,000/month
  
• Misc (electric, internet, cable TV, water, insurance, licensing, furniture rental): $50,000/month
  

So under your proposal, you can beat the Chronicle's offerings for a mere $2.5 million per month. Is that cheaper than the Chronicle's expenses? Probably, but only because it doesn't include printing and distribution and the labor associated with it. But the question remains -- where are you going to get $2.5 million per month? From ads on the web site?

Let's pretend that you're able to get $3.00CPM for your web ads. That means you'd need to show 833,333,333 each month ads to break even. There are people 5.6 million people in the Houston area. 4,639,000 of them are over the age of 12. 14.9% of those have less than a ninth grade education, so they're probably not going to visit any news web site under any circumstances. That leaves you with roughly four million people. How many of them have computers with internet connections? The national average is 73.6%, so you really only have roughly 3.5 million potential visitors. If you put three ads on a web page, that means you need 277,777,777 page views. Which means you'd need each and every person in the Houston metropolitan area to view 80 pages of your web site each month just to break even. And no, the heavy users don't make up for the light users. It doesn't work that way in internet advertising. Heavy users are worth less per ad than light users. How are you going to get all those people to visit the web site? Advertising? Well, there's another expense you didn't plan for.

I know there are people that would do it for $3,000 a month and $200 in gas and a car write off and some meals....and then a few could even "meet people" if they wanted to like at HAIF happy hours and get more story ideas and really develop a COMMUNITY again instead of a rag with some local sports scores and AP retreads

I applaud your conviction and interest in wanting to create another local news source. I'm all for that. It's pretty much the core of the HAIF experience. But you're not going to blow away the Chronicle. I don't think that's a reasonable goal. Let the Chronicle do what it does best, and let HAIF figure out what we do best.

At this point it seems that what HAIF can contribute is neighborhood news and gossip in a centralized source. There have been dozens of times when HAIF threads have spawned further research and investigation by the newspapers and television stations. That's a good thing. But we shouldn't pretend that we're going to replace them.

I've talked to a few of my reporter friends about writing for HAIF on the side. A couple of them are really excited about the idea, but can't either because of contractual obligations (non-compete clauses), or simple fear that they'd lose their jobs over it in a bad economy.

If anyone else with a journalism background or not is interested in contributing longer-length news pieces to HAIF, just let me know. It doesn't have to be huge exposes -- just neighborhood news. Things of interest.

Some HAIFers already have their Yelp accounts linked to HAIF so that whenever they write a restaurant review it automatically gets a thread on here for other people to reply to and discuss. I think it's just the beginning of what's possible.

[crunchtastic]

who said amateurs....there are plenty of people with English, journalism, communications, or business degrees out there

and are you saying this site alone does not have plenty of quality well sourced info even if it has grammar or spelling errors.....you can always hire someone to edit it.....and probably edit it better than the chron

Degrees aren't the issue. Any working professional journalists are probably going to be contractually prohibited from writing for another outlet.

Professional news and information that appears on sites like HAIF and Swamplot are not the same thing. This is what I mean by sourcing. An example: a developer's rendering on a website is not a credible news source. It is advertising. I'm not dogging you, I'm just pointing out the distinction between bits of uncomfirmed information and proper news reporting.

[TexasVines]

So, you only buy stock in companies that are down the street? Your 401(k) portfolio is only invested in companies in the same city as you? The company you work for doesn't buy any raw materials from outside the city, and doesn't sell its finished products to companies outside of your own ZIP code? The problem isn't the business reporting. The problem is a lack of understanding on your part of why it's important.

hahahahahaha REALLY PLEASE think about what you are saying and then step into 1999 if not 2009 PLEASE....if you have made even ONE investment decision on ANY stock in the last decade based on any information you read in chron or any similar paper I would hate to even think of looking at your portfolio....we live in a 24hr news cycle with 24 hour 365 global trading where not only have people actually successfully pumped and dumped stocks based on web rumor some have actually been caught, convicted, and locked up for it......and you seriously think people make ANY investment decision from the AP rehash in chron that lands on their door step an hour or so before the market opens when the futures traders have already been making trades on information 10 minutes after the markets closed and for the next 12+ hours after that....much less by the time probably 50% of the people sit down at the kitchen table or the office break room to break open the paper the markets have been open for hours and any "news" is ancient history in the realm of the stock market...I have a relative that works at a Huntsman plastics plant in Odessa and another related to him that works at the Odessa American....the Koch Brothers are thinking of shutting it down and the reporting on that BIG local story has been decent....but do you really think their customers like the medical company that has a 3 year contract with that plant that they won't back out of opened the OAOA site or a print edition of the Odessa American and read for the first time that plant (their main supplier) was shutting down.....thanks for the laughs on that point

Who get it from the local newspapers.

so the local paper had the breaking news about the never will happen plans for the former Astroworld site...or did swamplot have it first and then three threads were on here before chron even had it formatted and ready for printing...oh wait I don't think they have even run the story and I doubt it is on their website now or that they will ever run the story...and someone on this site has even "fact checked" with one of the groups involved

who had the lease of the Discovery Tower by Hess first....this site or chron.....who has the confirmed rumors of things coming and going to local malls first....this site or chron.....the list is endless

You seem to misunderstand the costs involved.

Hiring a reporter to chase down shootings in your neighborhood: $100k (including benefits).

Reprinting a wire service story in the entertainment section: $0.

Again, there appears to be a reader problem. You are mistaking "entertainment" in the entertainment section for news from the news section. They're not the same thing.

The difference is that newspapers have to find sources and documentation for everything. Internet postings can be truthful or not. Correct or incorrect. Insightful or misinterpreted. Writing is not journalism. It is a failure of the educational system that you can't tell the difference.

and short blurbs on chron with spelling errors and "facts" that have to be changed later is not "writing" VS quality journalism....that is exactly my point....chron is in a gray zone between poor journalism and poor writing....and they are doing both poor....people want information.....70%+ do not trust the media of any type....so they just want something to pique their interest or something to know now that can be followed up on.....chron does neither well......there was more information with FACTS about the jumper downtown than I cared to know on this site....by the time chron would have gotten to it if ever I would have seen three TV news reports and known the guys name from this site.....I had the unfortunate experience on city data just yesterday of reading a thread about a guy that killed himself with a gun on top of the galleria parking garage....by the time the thread ended their were pics of the guy laying their dead with blood around him and another from the garage itself of the floor sweep all over the pool of blood.....then it was even more unfortunate that the SON of the guy that did it came into the thread and told everyone why he did it and then when he was questioned his sister came on ad said yes it was their dad and that was her brother that was angry at the post some had made....I am not sure the story was even in chron

These exist. They're called "stringers."

well stringers would be much more interesting than the professional BS found in chron or most other papers today

$12k/year + expenses + equipment + benefits. How is that different that hiring a cheap reporter right out of college?

A reporter right out of college from UT that was born and raised in El Paso has no clue about Houston and it will take then 5 years to get to where some of our bored house wives, retired people, or self employed are at now

The items on this forum appeal to a particular group that seeks out this kind of information. It is not interesting to 99% of the populace.

and the items the chron delivers to your door or puts up on their website is A. so interesting to people they have already read or watched stories on it and have all the info if not more than they ever wanted B. so boring bland or stupid and such a repeat of what has already been printed that it is of no interest to anyone but a FOOL

right now this site is pretty limited in what is discussed....but some of these topics seem to go on forever and draw more and more people in to the site and the topic....like sink holes or round patches with trees in a flood zone....you may gain viewers slowly, but chron is losing them quickly....I would say that makes this site and you the winner even with a limited coverage of things

What you seem to forget is that the Chronicle, like the television stations, is a mass medium. It is not intended or designed to cater to an individual, but rather to the largest number of people possible within its service area. If you want someone to follow you around and report on the things that are only of interest to you, then you are free to hire your own reporting staff to accomplish that goal.

and you seem to forget that by the time chron has the AP story on their site or at anyones front door I knew more than I wanted to about every single thing about the plane crashing into the Hudson river.....again that is part of my point......if chron thinks they are mass media (as a LOCAL paper) then they are getting their asses kicked by the REAL mass media and they are losing readers left and right....because there ate 10,000 sited from the mass media that can actually have someone LIVE on scene to report and have a video up for hours if not days before chron does....so they can WISH they are a mass media all they want, but everyone that is leaving them in droves seems to think they are not and or they are not as good as many of the 10,000 mass media outlets....and just as we find that the strangest things (than many would think are only of interest to them) like round circles in flood zones, old houses that have been moved behind a chain link fence, subdivisions that flooded and went away....suddenly we find a three page topic with more information, photos, and information than some archives have in them....and suddenly it is interesting....and you know sometimes reporters even come HERE of all places to ask about old abandoned hotels that people ON HERE have actually squatted in

No, you haven't. $600,000 + equipment (another $500,000) + benefits (another $600,000) + expenses (another $200,000). By your own tally, that's nearly two million dollars a month. But you've forgotten important details:

* An office to put all this together: $50,000/month

* Business managers, accountants, clerical staff: $50,000/month

* AP membership: The Chron probably pays about $1 million/year. Let's pretend we can get it for $360,000

* Web site (including staff to run it): $80,000/month

* Copy editors: $100,000/month

* Photo editors: $50,000/month

* Sales staff: $100,000/month

* Misc (electric, internet, cable TV, water, insurance, licensing, furniture rental): $50,000/month

So under your proposal, you can beat the Chronicle's offerings for a mere $2.5 million per month. Is that cheaper than the Chronicle's expenses? Probably, but only because it doesn't include printing and distribution and the labor associated with it. But the question remains -- where are you going to get $2.5 million per month? From ads on the web site?

Let's pretend that you're able to get $3.00CPM for your web ads. That means you'd need to show 833,333,333 each month ads to break even. There are people 5.6 million people in the Houston area. 4,639,000 of them are over the age of 12. 14.9% of those have less than a ninth grade education, so they're probably not going to visit any news web site under any circumstances. That leaves you with roughly four million people. How many of them have computers with internet connections? The national average is 73.6%, so you really only have roughly 3.5 million potential visitors. If you put three ads on a web page, that means you need 277,777,777 page views. Which means you'd need each and every person in the Houston metropolitan area to view 80 pages of your web site each month just to break even. And no, the heavy users don't make up for the light users. It doesn't work that way in internet advertising. Heavy users are worth less per ad than light users. How are you going to get all those people to visit the web site? Advertising? Well, there's another expense you didn't plan for.

bad math on my part doing yearly VS monthly...point taken....but it is still probably way less than chron spends to have their AP retreads sent to the door and or rehashed on their website....but my point is chron is just trying to rehash the same crap and they are slowly DIEING doing it....how about in HOUSTON, Texas of all places taking a chance and trying something different....instead of just putting more garbage from the AP that is yesterdays news by the time it hits chron.com much less a driveway.....sitting around telling people what your function WAS 20 years ago and going broke doing it is not really a solution to a problem....it is avoiding the reality that chron.com delivers next to nothing LOCAL and they are 2 days behind on anything national....which to me means they really bring NOTHING to the table that is worth paying for...especially for home delivery

I applaud your conviction and interest in wanting to create another local news source. I'm all for that. It's pretty much the core of the HAIF experience. But you're not going to blow away the Chronicle. I don't think that's a reasonable goal. Let the Chronicle do what it does best, and let HAIF figure out what we do best.

At this point it seems that what HAIF can contribute is neighborhood news and gossip in a centralized source. There have been dozens of times when HAIF threads have spawned further research and investigation by the newspapers and television stations. That's a good thing. But we shouldn't pretend that we're going to replace them.

I've talked to a few of my reporter friends about writing for HAIF on the side. A couple of them are really excited about the idea, but can't either because of contractual obligations (non-compete clauses), or simple fear that they'd lose their jobs over it in a bad economy.

If anyone else with a journalism background or not is interested in contributing longer-length news pieces to HAIF, just let me know. It doesn't have to be huge exposes -- just neighborhood news. Things of interest.

Some HAIFers already have their Yelp accounts linked to HAIF so that whenever they write a restaurant review it automatically gets a thread on here for other people to reply to and discuss. I think it's just the beginning of what's possible.

I was only using this site as an example and not implying that YOU need to go out and do this idea or that you would even care to....I was using this site as an example of something that beats the living hell out of LOCAL information on a wide variety of topics (even as limited as it is) when compared to the LOCAL news paper....because the LOCAL news paper brings very little in the way of LOCAL news

Degrees aren't the issue. Any working professional journalists are probably going to be contractually prohibited from writing for another outlet.

Professional news and information that appears on sites like HAIF and Swamplot are not the same thing. This is what I mean by sourcing. An example: a developer's rendering on a website is not a credible news source. It is advertising. I'm not dogging you, I'm just pointing out the distinction between bits of uncomfirmed information and proper news reporting.

I don't mind if someone is dogging me though I usually don't take a difference of opinion that way......but chron sources very little of ANYTHING these days and much of the information on a site like this may be unconfirmed at first, but usually within hours and sometimes even minutes there is some type of confirmation usually from a source that chron would never dig up

my local paper just DROPPED their business section entirely...I rarely if ever read that part anyway because the bust LOCAL BUSINESS information was the blog by their business reporter that used unconfirmed information sent to him along with his own sources and information to track down and verify and or put to rest rumors about what is going on with retail comings and goings, restaurant comings and goings, and other stories....even if it was an "i contacted them and no comment or they are not coming"....it was still more interesting than seeing what the price of West Texas Intermediate was YESTERDAY

same thing with another paper I read where they have a blog for the local college sports....guy says I am hearing some information on this recruit or on this player leaving and I am working on verification....a few hours later after some returned phone calls or interviews he can confirm or deny a recruit signing or a player leaving...then he does a full story for the paper....but by the time the paper hits the story has been beat to death on a fan forum and people have talked to their friend that is a roommate of the player mentioned and we know even more than the story does...but it got its start on that blog...and if that reporter was not tied down by having to write a story for a money losing print edition then he could probably do even more in depth and cover the rumors flying on the fan forums as well

I am not trying to pick on chron specifically it is all LOCAL papers....because they have ALL ditched LOCAL information for AP rehashes...and I imagine a collection of "barely interesting to most" would bring in an aggregate TON more viewers than a collection of already news to most AP and wire feeds with some poorly developed gloom and doom or blood....because I bet a LOT of people on this site find it much more informative and LOCAL and interesting than 99% of what is on chron...I know I do

[editor]

I don't mind if someone is dogging me though I usually don't take a difference of opinion that way......but chron sources very little of ANYTHING these days

Prove it.

[TexasVines]

Prove it.

prove what?