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Senate Bill 0239 creating L3Cs (a low-profit limited liability company that can accept grants) is awaiting Gov. Quinn's signature. Upon its signing, any social entrepreneur will be able to create an L3C in Illinois. It's way past time to stop quacking and launch some new newsrooms for Chicago.
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What does this headline mean? How have any of these "news blogs" put any skin in the game? What fixed costs do they have?
Employees? Nope.
Print? Nope.
Marketing? Nope.
Explain.
Don't know if this question is directed me or Sally Duros, the author of the blog entry and the headline. But I'll do my best to field this one...
She opens with the lines -
She seems to define bloggers as the "new newsrooms." And the "skin" would be the hours of uncompensated labor that bloggers have contributed to the future of journalism .
I wrote about some of our new newsrooms last week. You can see the post in my archive on Huff Po. Some of the news sites I am talking about, like The Beachwood Reporter, have a dozen writers who are writing for free. Others like Chi-Town daily News employ maybe a half dozen employees at low wages. The print newsrooms in Chicago have been exploding for years and tossing excellent editors and reporters out. Many of these — like the two I just mentioned— have started their own news services. These online enwsrooms are the future of news coverage in Chicago as legacy newsrooms disappear. Read my articles and then ask me more..!
Will do. But my point still stands. "Skin in the game" refers to someone taking on risk. How are these new news sites taking on any risk? I see them doing the exact opposite, taking on as little risk as possible.
I replied at length to your post about two hours ago? where did it go? I'll try again later. please read my posts. Do you really want to joust or are you just playing with me?
Not meaning to joust at all. My point is just that while I acknowledge some of these sites are doing good stuff, they aren't assuming risk. What's risky about a one-man blog? If you get in trouble, you just shut it down. Beachwood Investigator doesn't have any employees to support or vendors expecting him to pay up. His risk is very low, therefore I think he actually has very little skin in the game.
Meanwhile the mainstream media, being established businesses, have whole hosts of obligations that are slowly dragging them down into dissolution. This also is not good.
I will grant that the ChiTown Daily News people have some risk in that there are a handful of employees all looking to the publisher guy's ability to get people to keep donating money to support them. So that's some risk.
I just wanted to point out that starting up a one-person news site is actually not very risky at all.
The Beachwood is NOT a one-man blog, Chi-Town as you admitted is not a one-person operation. No business nor newsroom starts out wanting to be one man - all businesses, especially newsrooms want to grow. These newsrooms are operating on volunteers and threadbare earnings. Read my article last week on Sate of Pay.
Just curious: Have you ever put skin in the game? Do you know what it's like to have everything that you own tied up in a business, even if that business is just yourself (not to say these are)? My point is these sites haven't grown to capacity yet but they must and they will for chicago to have a complete news chain. It's coming so let;s get ready.
"And the "skin" would be the hours of uncompensated labor that bloggers have contributed to the future of journalism."
Good blogging is a FULL TIME job, inspired by passion, and often financially void...
I disagree that putting lots of time into something is assuming risk. The risk comes from how you structure it. If a blogger goes solo and doesn't incorporate, the only risk they're accruing is that they won't make their next web hosting payment. Otherwise, they can close down any time they want. That's one of the great things.
Now if they quit their day job to work on their blog. That's putting some skin in the game. Yes. If they take out a loan. Skin in the game.
Anyway, I understand where you folks are coming from better now. Thank you.
What about going into bad neighborhoods at night or even during the day to cover a story or to get a photo? Would this be a risk?
Certainly! Are there many bylines on these blogs coming from Englewood?
I assume that your point is that there are not many stories or photos that match my scenario. I agree, but they do exist.
Last week I was trying to shoot on Halsted, but some of Farachan's people apparently did not like that I was there... I left before things got ugly; without getting one photo... I felt at risk. Not the first time.
More or less, yes. My point in this thread is to toss a little cold water on the "ra-ra go blogs!" sentiment that I see here and on other sites. It's great to have some new things popping up, but we have to be honest about their reach (incredibly small) and potential impact (not so good without funding, stable advertising or miracle growth of audience).
Not surprised at all. Glad you made it away safely.
Now imagine you had the ability to say "Sorry, boys. I'm with the Trib/Sun-Times. If you have a problem, call our lawyers, because what I'm doing is perfectly legal."
Big difference, eh?
No doubt. I need a fake badge!!!
I think this quote best sums up what everyone is the field of journalism is thinking:
Fake mustache usually suffices.
unfortunately, i am on assignment right now, but i will specifically address all your thoughts later.
For us students, there's also this:
Taken from "J-Schools Play Catchup."
I've just read the entire comment thread here and I totally get where you're coming from and agree in many respects. On the one hand, journalism entrepreneurs are kind of heroic to do what they do. On the other hand, will any of them ever make any money? I say give them a chance for now; it's sooooo early in the process. And if you're interested in participating in discussions about these issues, you might like http://jstartup.com/
Admiral, I strongly disagree that "just" starting a blog or news site is not skin in the game. If the person is pouring everything he or she has into it, with little compensation, that is a great deal of money NOT earned elsewhere.
When I started full-time free-lancing 28 years ago, making very little money in the first two years, I was risking a lot: betting on making it by investing heavily in time and focus to build up a beat, a writing style and a group of paying clients. It took about four years to get going. That's skin.
So please, do not underestimate the amount of risk and effort being put into this by a lot of very skilled, very dedicated people. They are betting their careers by being out front in the biggest evolution of the news business in our lifetimes.
And I gotta disagree that a financial risk is the only kind of risk there is. Time and labor are assets. All other measures of wealth are secondary.
hello- agreed! as the old saw goes: Time IS money. Time in the most valuable thing we have in this lifetime. Blogging done right, judiciously, with original reporting is certainly a full-time job, and if add Twitter in...It's a bit like being the old Teletype machine and rewrite man.
Actually the liability issues are huge for bloggers, which is why sites like Beachwood, Chi-Town and LISC are incorporated and protected. It's also one of the reasons why I do not do original reporting for my blog and I am not really a blogger. When I was at the Sun-Times and first started writing about subprime mortgages and condo fraud aI received menacing emails and phone calls. I am bot willing to take this on as an independent and nobody should have to. That's why we need to grow these newsrooms to scale and invest in them, as well as what remains on the legacy newsrooms when the dust clears.
the issue of press credentials has not even begun to be sorted out. The Trib's Chicago Now blog network offers nothing in the way of credentials to its bloggers.
Well said.
If you would like to see more of this kind of conversation in Chicago, I am looking to keep the ball rolling by attending a conference next week in minneapolis on Economic Models for News. The culture of an organization is set at the top and I believe a newsroom's culture should be mission-based to serve the public...so if you would, please, circulate this link to your friends who you think might be willing to donate a few dollars to make my trip happen. Thanks much!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/615518646/travel-budget-to-attend-ec...
sduros, post that link as a new story to the Citizen! That's what this site's for! LOL.
But it's not a story. It's a fundraising link....
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