Public libraries have become substitute offices for the recently disenfranchised, so it wasn’t unusual that 40 bright, talented and unemployed people found themselves in a conference room on a dreary day at the Montclair Public Library last January.
June 1, 2009
The Media Equation
Cast Out, but Still Reporting
By DAVID CARR
Public libraries have become substitute offices for the recently disenfranchised, so it wasn’t unusual that 40 bright, talented and unemployed people found themselves in a conference room on a dreary day at the Montclair Public Library last January.
But they had something else in common: they were all refugees from The Star-Ledger, which had required deep layoffs to stay in business. And while journalism seemed to be done with them, they were not done with journalism.
Less than three months later, NewJerseyNewsroom (newjerseynewsroom.com), a Web site owned and operated by journalists, is up and running. Last Friday, the site was topped with an article by Tom Hester, a longtime State House reporter, deconstructing the decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court. It upheld Gov. Jon Corzine’s decision to upend a 34-year-old formula that pushed the most public school financing to the poorest districts.
Sitting last Friday at the same public library where the enterprise was conceived, Mr. Hester, 65, talked with wonder about the ability just to push a button and find an audience, bypassing the editors, printing and trucks that used to convey his work.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “We just kept updating the story as it went along, and it was there instantly, for everyone to read.”
And he didn’t seem to mind that he was paid exactly nothing for his lifetime of experience and the article. It’s a tough time to be a journalist but, hey, it beats working for a living.
The site went live on April 13 and now counts about 51,000 page views since then. The venture capital for the site all comes in the form of human sweat. The site is incorporated, but the work is voluntary, with the founding members doing journalism for the sheer love of it, and if something of value is created, they will eventually receive a share of the company. (So far, the site hosts a modest number of ads.)
They all have business cards that identify them as working journalists, but they paid for them themselves. It’s a long shot effort at creating an alternative source of news, although few could argue that the state, which is a virtual Superfund site of corruption, doesn’t need it.
“This is a start-up, but we are not doing it without resources,” said Garrett Morrison, 42, a sports editor who is handling much of the business side. “We have Tom Hester’s experience, his Rolodex, and people are happy to return his calls. There are a lot of people like him.”
Sitting between them, Matt Romanoski, 43, a guy who says he has trouble getting rid of the blinking programming light on his VCR, explains how he came to serve as Webmaster.
“I bought a book called ‘HTML for Dummies’ and just started putting it together as best I could,” he said. Andrew Lagomarsino is in charge of recruiting people to work for nothing, or an occasional hourly fee for particularly difficult technical issues.
“For the price of a good seat to a Yankees home game, we’ve gotten this site up and running,” he said. Total cash outlays have been about $300, excluding the price of business cards.
It helps that there’s a lot of talent at loose ends. Across the country, various bands of journalistic hardies — newsroom pros whose services are no longer salient to a crippled and disrupted information economy — have taken matters into their own hands. Several hybrid models have sprung up in San Diego, Minneapolis, Denver and Chicago.
Not only is no one getting rich, but also no one has come close to cracking the code on a sustainable business model. Even absent trucks, newsrooms and administrative costs, making the calls and reporting is an arduous, expensive endeavor.
“People are still interested in good content, real stories put together by experienced people,” Mr. Morrison said. “Look at Carol Ann Campbell, the health reporter who worked at The Star-Ledger who has been doing stuff for us. She is not the kind of person who should reinvent herself. She is better at what she is doing than almost anyone I can think of.”
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Back in 2007, I used to see Ms. Campbell at our children’s bus stop. Montclair, where we both live, is lousy with journalists because it has the kind of houses and schools that midrange professionals can afford (if they have jobs, of course). Back then, we would chat about navigating the increasingly unpredictable shoals of journalism while our kids ran around at the bus stop.
At the time, Ms. Campbell was doing significant reporting in The Star-Ledger about the infection-ridden environs of hospitals, work that resulted in a law requiring that medical institutions publish their rates of infection. Another piece about the resources being given to patients with little chance of getting better rather than providing hospice or home care also made a big splash.
In April 2008, she was named the state’s journalist of the year by the New Jersey Press Association.
“Seven months later, I was taking the buyout,” she recalled on Friday. “It was a gun-to-your-head buyout and I was really torn. If I had made the decision 24 hours earlier, I might have stayed, but I had to ask myself, ‘Is this position going to sustain me until my kids are out of college?’”
As the swine flu epidemic unfolded recently, Ms. Campbell did several articles for NewJerseyNewsroom. “It’s a great adventure, an idealistic one, and I’m thrilled to be part of it.” But the big projects that she received so much notice for require significant resources that are currently beyond the reach of NewJerseyNewsroom.
“They are going to need the kind of work that is provocative and interesting, and that takes time and money,” she said. “They are sort of in a chicken-and-egg situation.”
For the time being, she is doing other freelance writing and looking for other work, while kicking in the occasional piece for the site. “They asked, and how could you not be part of it when they are pouring their heart and soul into it?” she said, adding, “NewJerseyNewsroom is a sign of extraordinary optimism from a profession known for its cynicism.”
Working from her basement office has had its challenges and satisfactions, but she finds herself thinking about what she left behind at The Star-Ledger.
“Going in there every day was such a joy — the wit, the cleverness, the feeling of being together and making something happen every day. A newsroom is a completely magical place,” she said.
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