Lookout Lands in Google News Initiative Boot Camp
When I launched the Tri-State Lookout on July 21, I had plenty of journalism experience, but no experience with sustaining a local news publication. Yet past news business savvy has been stumped by the migration of ads to cybergiant sites, and many newspapers around the country have closed, particularly weeklies that covered municipal government, education and other closeup hyperlocal issues, resulting in information gaps rhat research has found damaging to community institutions and partipation. Between 2004 and 2019, one in five local papers closed, according to the New York Times. Closures then increased with the pandemic,,leaving more areas of the U.S. with negligible local news beyond what social media offered, blended with gossip and hearsay--not researched, fact checked information.
In 2018, as the Times Herald Record shrunk, I wrote two magazine stories about the issue--one about the nature and consequences of the local news decline and one about innovations to compensate. Which was fortunate, because when the Times Herald Record ceased to employ people, including me, to cover the Port Jervis area, I had ideas for new directions in local coverage and knew where to turn for support.
That was how I learned about the Google News Initiative Boot Camp, a nine-week program for news startups. The course is free, but applicants from around the country compete to get in. Phillip Smith created it after years of coaching and consulting for entrepreneurial media companies. In particular, he was Chief Technology Officer for the Tyee, an innovative online publication based in British Columbia. He developed the boot camp three years ago during his John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where he researched entrepreneurship and what improves the likelihood of news startup survival, as 90% fail, he says.
As an entrepreneur himself, he created the boot camp for news media entrepreneurs aiming to fill a gap in local coverage or, without geographic boundaries, cover a single underreported topic.
Smith noticed, he wrote in an article for Medium, that “many journalism funders . . . often give out grants to the same people and projects year after year. I didn’t see how it was going to be possible to reinvent the media ecosystem if funders kept investing in the same ‘winners’ and never made the necessary (and more challenging) effort to reach out to and engage new entrants. It’s a big part of what led me to launch the boot camp in the first place.”
So as cybergiants whose advertising depleted local news of their revenue now make efforts to fund programs to support local news, Google supported LION, the Local Independent Online News organization, to fund Smith’s program. His boot camp has spawned successes such as Sioux Falls Simplified in South Dakota, Shasta Scout in Shasta County, California, and Queerency, which covers LGBT businesses and entrepreneurship.
To choose boot campers, Smith says, he evaluated applicants’ project ideas, goals for the boot camp, reporting examples, and LinkedIn profiles.
“What I was looking for, however, was a cohort of people who would work well together,” he wrote in Medium. “I chose projects that were at a similar stage of development and scope, and projects that were led by people who had a demonstrated ability to do reporting. I believe this idea of a ‘coherent cohort’ is part of this boot camp’s secret sauce.”
After competing with about 100 applicants around the U.S. for a place in the bootcamp, I joined founders of 23 other news startups for the program of seminars, coaching and other Zoom meetings and assignments, guided by Smith and his coach colleagues.
Smith responded to every question with, “Great question!” And he and his team gave great, well-informed answers. I also learned much from my fellow boot campers, so near on Zoom even if geographically distant, and I hope to keep hearing about their dilemmas and remedies. So I emerge newly equipped to cope with the challenges of maintaining and enhancing the Tri-State Lookout, with community support, that is.
After the Bootcamp comes to a conclusion next week, I look forward to resuming the regularity of weekly Tri-State Lookout publication.
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