Friday, September 11, 2009
News Bites Now Departing, the Chi-Town Daily News
Posted by Michael Miner on 09.11.09 at 03:26 PM
The Chi-Town Daily News is shutting down — or is it rebooting? Founder and editor Geoff Dougherty says on the electronic newspaper's Web site that the "editorial team. . .is moving on to launch a new, for-profit local news venture." Dougherty laid off his staff yesterday, but "we expect to rehire them at the new company shortly."
The Daily News was Chicago journalism's high-profile Web-only venture. Dougherty had a knack for getting impressive grants, and for getting the Daily News's name and his own in those occasional national stories on intriguing ventures in local Web-only journalism.
But the grants weren't enough. "The Daily News needs $1 million to $2 million per year to do a great job of covering a city as sprawling and complex as Chicago," Dougherty says on his site. "And despite hundreds of phone calls and letters to foundations, corporations and individual donors over the past four years, we've never come close to that.
"Last year, we raised about $300,000. This year, due to the economic downturn, it was unclear whether we would be able to maintain that level of revenue, let alone move quickly to expand our coverage."
Comments (2)
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this is a real shame ... predictable, but a shame none-the-less.
recall dougherty & others singing the virtues of a local non-profit biz model @ the journalism town hall back in feb, but other than something like a street wise, never thought you could sustain a news organization on hand-outs that didn't included a guaranteed long-term endowment.
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Agreed, it's a shame. It's also yet another depressing data point in the search for a new business model for substantive journalism. What we're learning is that anything that depends on grants in nonviable. Grants are here one day, gone the next. And even when they're available, they're pretty slender reeds to lean on. And, I suspect, that whether it's in print or online, a journalistic entity will never generate self-sustaining revenue unless it takes care of what should be Job No. 1, ie making itself not just a pleasant little adjunct in the media day but a vital, indispensable product that no reader would dream of doing without.
In Europe, the substantive news organizations--mostly newspapers--depend mainly on what they charge their readers at the newsstand for their revenue, with advertising a secondary source of income. Here, it has been the other way around. In Europe, newspapers know that they need to engage powerfully with their readers to hang onto that direct reader revenue. That means sharp, partisan reporting and unique content. Here, newspapers have mainly been focused on not rocking the boat too much and upsetting their advertisers, their leading source of revenue. Readers have been a secondary consideration. Thus we've been treated to too much dull, pro-forma, superficial, he-said-she-said, view-from-nowhere stuff masquerading as solid, responsible journalism under the convenient but slickly misleading guise of balance and objectivity.
No wonder American readers feel less than compelled to hang onto what, after all, is a thin, rudderless product. To the degree that online products ape that model, they are, I believe, also likely to fail.
