On the radio last week I spoke about a publication I received from Jan Schaefer at American Univeristy: J-Lab’s New Voices Program: “What Works”. New Voices is a program created five years ago to fund community news startups. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, the program awards small grants to seed the launch of innovative community news ventures in the United States and explore models for sustainability.
For readers interested to understand more about the thinking that informs Talk of the Sound you can learn a great deal from this report.
The Full PDF for the report has been uploaded to Scribd.
The section on measures of success struck home.
Talk of the Sound began with precisely this idea that too few people had too big a say in how New Rochelle is run with too little accountability and absolutely zero transparency. The sense of entitlement, especially among unpaid elected positions like school board and library, was so pungent back in 2008 you could smell it in the air. Some of that sense of entitlement has been replaced by indignation — some of our school board members such Deidre Polow, Mary Jane Reddington and others are openly hostile to the idea that anyone might dare question their competence or motives as the payroll and budgets swell while test scores and graduations rates fall.
Talk of the Sound has dramatically altered news coverage of New Rochelle over the past 2+ years. Reporters and producers from Gannett’s Journal News, Channel 2 WCBS-TV, Channel 4 WNBC-TV, Channel 7 WABC-TV (three of the biggest network-owned stations in the United States, Cablevision’s Channel 12 News and various local weeklies and blogs follow Talk of the Sound all acknowledge monitoring Talk of the Sound and stories first reported on Talk of the Sound routinely get picked up by “mainstream” media outlets. Some stories have gone beyond what are considered the “local” outlets: the censorship of “Girl, Interrupted” at New Rochelle High School (Associated Press, The Guardian, Boing Boing), the gym teacher arrested over a dodge ball incident (Sports Illustrated), the sexting middle school security guard (The New York Post), the animal sacrifices in local parks (Daily Mail-UK). Overall, media coverage of New Rochelle is far higher today than in 2008 when the site was launched.
Beyond the occasional reports on the City Council, little of what went on in New Rochelle was being covered by any media outlets. Talk of the Sound began regularly covering Board of Education meetings, Industrial Development Agency meetings, Business Improvement District meetings and others. At the same time, Talk of the Sound began pushing for compliance with the New York State Freedom of Information Law and Open Meetings Law. While compliance has improved at a number of agencies, the Board of Education continues to defy both FOIL and the Open Meeting Laws and the Business Improvement District took a year to make a public announcement of one of their meetings (and buried it on their web site).
Talk of the Sound has exposed corruption and waste at various levels with both City government and Board of Education. The site broke numerous stories based on its own investigative reporting including the Chairman of the Municipal Services Commission taking illegal property tax exemptions including exemptions reserved for Combat Veterans despite never having serves, a building department manager who approved a condominium complex with no roof drainage system along most of the front of the buildings facing out onto a major 4-lane artery running through downtown New Rochelle, a senior building inspector and union head who was being chauffeured to job sites by a City worker after his driver’s license was revoked following a DWI conviction, a transportation administrator for the school system who was arrested for DWI after crashing her car into three parked vehicles and flipping her own vehicle, crossing-guards who were paid (and still are) to monitor street corners in the middle of the day more than a year after the school switched from a half-time to a full-time kindergarten program, Board of Education employees who were converting to their own personal use school district vehicles, tools, supplies, equipment and furniture. As one carpenter told Talk of the Sound, no one told them they couldn’t…and everyone did it. There are, as readers know, many other (feel free to add your favorites in the comments section).
Talk of the Sound was the first to began video taping candidate forums throughout New Rochelle so that residents could see for themselves whether candidates were giving a consistent account of themselves or changing their message from audience to audience. The site was the first to tape IDA meetings as part of an effort to bring greater transparency to lower visibility government committees like IDA, Zoning and Planning committees; within a year the Council voted to begin broadcasting the meetings live. The Board of Education is likewise now taping all of their meetings for their cable access channel and there are plans to move to live broadcasts during this school year.
Talk of the Sound has registered hundreds of contributors, many who had never published before. The site has an active comments section (registration required). The Managing Editor has run training courses in partnership with the local public library and has plans to continue and expand those efforts. Residents have been enlisted in a “see something, click something” program to encourage readers to take pictures when they see something newsworthy such as a fire or car accident. Some of the sites best photos and reporting have come from reader tips based on cell phone photos.
It remains to be seen whether any sort of business model can be developed to make a community news site truly sustainable. Many traditional media outlets are not sustainable. Newsweek was sold off and merged with The Daily Beast, the New York Times has been selling itself off to a Mexican investor, the Rocky Mountain News closed, many newspapers are in bankruptcy. So sustainability is not necessarily an indicator of quality or pretty much anything else.
Talk of the Sound benefits from a great deal of gifted or subsidized services, mostly provided by the owner with support from donors and those who contribute content to the site. The work required to develop the site does entail providing some sort of financial support to at least get the site running as a break-even proposition. The upgraded the site is a major part of the effort to determine the economic viability of Talk of the Sound during year three of the three year plan.
Readers are strongly encouraged to take 15-20 minutes and view the PDF for the report online or, at least, read the summary version.
