In that session, held under a sunlit fall Denver afternoon outside the Sun’s offices, we shared the truths that we had kept to ourselves: Insomnia, endless lists of to-dos, worries about getting our fledgling enterprises right.
It’s not a formal group, just a working one, and we’ll go on to include other organizations dedicated to our twin missions: 1) becoming impactful replacements for dying chain dailies and 2) focusing on earned revenue to make it work.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve headed full-speed back into the industry conversation.
Their zeal to give their communities a fighting chance to better themselves is largely undaunted by funding woes or the difficulty of building anything new meant to last.
With one common mission — to pay more talented journalists to produce incisive, community-bettering journalism — we no longer need to debate what’s going to pay for it.
Now, in my public talks with new industry leaders like Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project, we see far more alignment than divergence.
We call that business side “Community and Commerce,” reflecting the fundamental relationship-building we’ve now done for 18 months.
We put a lot into our product, as we worked through it with our design firm, Charming Robot, and platform provider, the Los Angeles Times.
Do one fast-flagging Alden daily, an alt-weekly, and a small digital startup constitute a “news desert”? That term has been a shorthand, but the real problem here and elsewhere is that this region lacked the number of journalists it needed to thoroughly inform the public.
We’ve done big accountability stories and series on topics like school sexual assault and the difficulty of rebuilding for the 900 families who lost homes in 2020’s fires.
We didn’t plan to feature stories focusing only on women that week, but we want to recognize and make prominent the worthy and diverse people who make Santa Cruz County so endlessly interesting.
We’re way ahead on some — branded content has proven to be a home run — and meeting expectations we set for others, including membership, student engagement, and overall audience-building via newsletters and text messages.
Our promoted content — borrowed, as much of the Lookout model is, from The New York Times, in this case its “paid posts” — has now attracted almost 50 marketing partners.
We’re aiming for profitability next year, even as we begin planning where the next Lookout Local sites may be located.
Most of that has gone swimmingly, though the list of what needs at least a temporary workaround each month is never-ending.
Many of us have found that hiring younger people — the next generation of news — and training them is the most sensible strategy, both in the newsroom and on the business side.
Through it all, we kept our eye on our mission: Lookout aims to make Santa Cruz County a better place for all who live here.
As a long-time editor who conceived the Lookout editorial and business model, I know we’re secure in our “without fear or favor” standing, even as I freely mix with those in power.
Though we initially hired from across the country, our whole staff of 13 is now made up of Californians, nine of whom have strong Santa Cruz ties.
As Richard Gingras, Google’s vice-president of news, has emphasized at ISOJ and elsewhere: Focusing only on accountability journalism won’t serve enough of communities’ 2020s news needs — or provide a model for paying for them.
Santa Cruz is paradise with lots of problems, and one key role of local media in the 2020s is bringing a key eye to the real issues and the best solutions.
I’ve put all that in the back of my head because I have little time or room to address national or global issues on which I can have little impact.
Altogether, it’s been a wild and still foundation-building experience, one I wouldn’t trade for anything, even as I see so many of my old colleagues enjoying some retirement.
Ken Doctor is a long-time media analyst, speaker, and consultant, who contributed more than a million words to Nieman Lab before launching his own local news startup, uh, newspub, model, in November, 2020.