Beyond Journalism - Hyperlocal in New York

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Master thesis

Beyond Journalism - Hyperlocal in New York

Civic engagement at Corner Media Group, a case-study.

Z.L.B Dautzenberg

MA Journalistiek & Media

6140416

prof. dr. Mark Deuze

23007 woorden

24 juni 2016

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5.1 Corner Media Group: The organization p.38 5.1.1 News gap as business opportunity p.38 5.1.2 Business model p.39 5.2 The hyperlocal journalist p.43 5.2.1 Is it journalism? p.43 5.2.2 Objectivity vs. writing with the heart p.43 5.3 The community p.47 5.3.1 Local cheerleaders p.47 5.3.2 Creation of a dialogue p.50 5.3.3 Other sources: community boards and precinct meetings p.53 5.3.4 Creating impact p.55 5.3.5 Representing diversity p.57

PART VI Conclusion and discussion p.61

Bibliography p.65

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Preface

Born an bred in ‘de Bijlmer’ -a neighborhood in the periphery of Amsterdam- I have always experi-enced that local news was scarcely represented in the major newspaper. If there happened to be news about my neighborhood in the city newspaper it would mostly be crime related. The emer-gence of the internet made me imagine what it could do for local and regional news. Local and re-gional (free) newspapers have always existed in my neighborhood (Stadsblad Echo) but the quality has been debatable in my experience.

When I moved to New York in 2011 to study at the New School I came to live in Park Slope in Brooklyn. Although The New York Times can’t possibly be compared to Het Parool a similar situa-tion seems to exist in the periphery of New York City. In the wake of the Internet however, different neighborhoods came to be represented by blogs. Through these blogs I came to discover my “new” neighborhood Park Slope: local news, information about the public transport, events, shops were communicated to me through these digital news environments.

After moving back to Amsterdam I have traveled back to New York City several times and during these stays I noticed the growth of neighborhood blogs, the professionalization and the influence they came to have online. One of the things that fascinated me is that these blogs or ‘hyperlocal’ news sites did not replace anything: they originated from ‘themselves’. The fact that individuals had used the tools of the Internet to take the power into their own hands and write passionately about their neighborhood to create and serve the community attracted me.

My interest for communities stems from the Bijlmer in which social-utopian ideals were both carried out in the architecture and urban design of the neighborhood. Participatory citizenship was actively promoted through ‘livability projects’ and this might have nourished my natural interest for engage-ment and creation of communities. Wrapping up my academic career therefore with a thesis on the potential of civic engagement through hyperlocal journalism has been satisfactorily and rewarding. I would like to thank all the people that have invested their precious New York time to participate in this research project. Corner Media Group has given us a warm welcome even though they were amidst a big move and restructuring of the company. The fieldwork in Brooklyn was made possible by a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute in Missouri and the generous support of the Horizonfonds through the University of Amsterdam. I would like to thank Mark Deuze and Tamara Witschge for giving students a chance to get involved in researching the start-up culture in journal-ism through the Beyond Journaljournal-ism project. Lastly I would like to thank fellow researcher Guus Ritzen for a remarkable and inspiring collaboration.

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1. Introduction

1.1 Radical changes

The field of journalism is going through a period of tremendous changes, which are

described with terms like ‘uncertainty’ (Zelizer: 2015, p. 900) and even more alarming:

‘crisis’ (Zelizer: 2015, p. 888). Zelizer points out: ‘Journalism it is often said, is on its

way out, with the present crisis pushing it forcefully out the door’ (2015, 888). The end

of journalism has been proclaimed by scholars (Fulton: 2015, p. 364).

Measured by revenues, the newspaper industry in the United States has shrunk to 60

per cent of its size a decade ago (Franklin: 2014, p. 482). Over the past two decades

legacy newspapers have experienced a serious decline in readership, advertising and

subscription sales. This led several news print organizations across the United States

and elsewhere to laying off staff as well as roll back coverage areas (Chadha: 2015,

p1). These are tremendous changes for the field, but the proclaimed ‘end of journalism’

has not been borne out (Fulton: 2015, p. 364). While the platform to deliver journalism

may be changing, journalism itself had not died (Deuze: 2007).

The radical changes across all aspects of journalism (Franklin: 2014, p. 481) are

con-sidered to be a direct result of the emergence and development of the internet

(Morie-son & Usher: 2011, p.77). “The age of digital media” create difficulties for legacy media

and frenzied search for alternative business models to fund a sustainable journalism

for the future (Franklin: 2014, p. 481), at the same time scholars argue that this “age of

digital media” could also be seen in a more positive light.

Morieson and Usher argue that tremendous opportunities exist for journalism in the

digital era. They point out the importance to consider what new forms of journalism can

provide (Morieson & Usher: 2011, p.88). Van der Haak, Parks and Castells

subse-quently propose a perception of “explosion of journalism” rather than a “crisis of

jour-nalism”. They claim that the profession is more alive than ever and is going through a

multiplication of both forms and content at amazing speed (2012, 2923). We live in a

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time in which the media landscape changes rapidly and the relation between the

jour-nalist and potential audience is being renegotiated.

1.2 Beyond Journalism

Crisis or not, while legacy media experiment with the Internet, numerous independent

(online) entrepreneurial journalism initiatives arise worldwide. The Internet is

increas-ingly being used as a platform for startup news organizations by entrepreneurial

jour-nalists seeking to create new providers of news and information (Naldi & Picard: 2012,

p. 69).

Beyond Journalism is an academic collaborative project between Mark Deuze

(Univer-sity of Amsterdam) and Tamara Witsgsche (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) that explores

this start-up culture within the broader field of journalism, to get a better understanding

of entrepreneurial journalism in the digital age. The overall question Beyond Journalism

aims to answer is: What are the factors involved in creating and running a start-up in

journalism? This thesis is part of Beyond Journalism and presents a case-study of

CMG, an online journalism start-up which produces content that is characterized as

‘hyperlocal journalism’.

1.3 Hyperlocal: Corner Media Group

Please note that I will refer to CMG instead of Corner Media Group in this thesis.

The word ‘hyperlocal’ appears regularly in discussions about the future of the news

media and potential alternative models (Metzgar, Kurpius and Rowley: 2011, p. 773), it

has in the past even been announced to be ‘the next wave in journalism’ (Jan Shaffer:

2005, p.774). Hyperlocal has emerged in the last few years as a dominant and widely

recognized term to describe local and community online media (Barnett & Townend:

2015, p.337).

Local news is nothing new, but there is an unmistakable hype around its reinvention in

the digital age through hyperlocal phenomena (Hess & Waller: 2015, p.1). Over the

past two decades legacy newspapers have experienced a serious decline in

reader-ship, advertising and subscription sales. This led several news print organizations

across the United States and elsewhere to laying off staff as well as roll back coverage

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areas (Chadha: 2015, p1). Scholars have argued that these closures, among other

things, created ‘news gaps’ in various towns and neighborhoods across the country

(ibid). In the wake of the decline those perceived news gaps have proven to be fertile

ground for the phenomenon of ‘hyperlocal newsmedia’. As traditional news outlets

con-tinue to shrink, the new community news sites are also becoming a more critical source

of news. According to a survey by PEJ and the Pew Internet and American Life Project

last year, 24% of Internet users go to local community news websites at least several

times a month now (Remez: 2012).

This thesis presents a case-study of CMG: an entrepreneurial journalism start-up in

New York City that aims to cover areas that deal with these supposed ‘news gaps’.

CMG runs seven hyperlocal news websites, all covering specific neighborhoods in

Brooklyn. The company was founded in 2011 by Liena Zagara, who at the time ran a

successful neighborhood blog. She decided to professionalize her blog, and

additional-ly to purchase and start six other blogs within the borders of Brookadditional-lyn.

CMG

is an example of a business that explores new possibilities of journalism on the

hyperlocal news level with respect to the organization of the business as well as the

form and the content presented on the websites. The business has grown to be a

suc-cessful chain of hyperlocal news websites in seven neighborhoods in Brooklyn:

Ben-sonhurst, Park Slope, Ditmas Park, Sheepshead, South Slope, Fort Greene and

Ken-sington. The websites are worth 320.000 unique visitors a month people with an

aver-age of 780.000 paver-ageviews a month.

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CMG claims that these websites add significant value to the news environment, as well

as the creation of the community. “Our focus is to serve the residents of the

neighbor-hoods we cover with news they can use, whether it is to empower them to take action

regarding a quality of life issue, to inform them of transit changes, events in the

neigh-borhood, or the best new dining spots. (…) Where we excel is building community —

online and off — and that comes by focusing on the needs of all residents”

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is stated on

their website. This specific element has drawn my attention as it illustrates how digital

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http://cornermediagroup.com/ visited, december 19th 2015

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news outlets restore trust among readers and mobilize people on a local scale by

car-rying out a democratic role that in this form is native to the web.

1.4 Relevance thesis

There are a number of reasons why CMG serves as a relevant case-study.

CMG

stands for something bigger: it represents a movement of people taking the power in

their own hands by courageously stepping away from legacy media that have widely

been taken for granted. New online models could offer citizens the possibility of starting

their own media by employing easily accessible technology (van Kerkhoven: 2014, p.

297). That's exactly what happened at

CMG

. But what happens if these people take

the power into their own hands and which consequences does this have for the field of

journalism as a whole?

The research that has been conducted for my and Guus Ritzen's thesis serves to

an-swer the overall question of the overarching Beyond Journalism project: What are the

factors involved in creating and running a journalism-start-up? While Guus Ritzen

delves into the professional identity of CMG journalists, I will mainly concentrate on the

concept of civic engagement that is specific to

CMG

.

I will confine myself to implications that are related to civic engagement in this relatively

new form of journalism.

CMG

explicitly aims for the creation of an on- and offline

community and carries out the ambition to ‘empower’ residents of the neighborhood. A

mission statement does not achieve civic engagement; it requires an active reach out

to the community, but also inclusion of the community in the news organization.

En-couraging civic engagement in the context of hyperlocal journalism invites for a

renego-tiation of ideal typical values of the profession. Which consequences come into play

when the journalist aligns itself close to the reader? The watchdog role, objectivity and

neutrality are occupational values of the traditional journalist that are put under strain

once the journalist is embedded in the community. These negotiations impact the

pro-fession, but also the field of journalism as a whole. Civic engagement through

hyperlo-cal journalism is a noble pursuit, but also idealistic. Studying this aspect will give insight

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in which ways hyperlocal journalism veers off from traditional journalism and in which

ways this impact and contest the profession and the field of journalism as a whole.

PART II

Theoretical framework

To further develop the concept of civic engagement in relation to hyperlocal news

web-sites I will consider the ‘hyperlocal’ movement in journalism. I will then explore the case

of Patch.com, which became somewhat of a blueprint of how not to do hyperlocal

jour-nalism. The case of Patch showed in particular how important it is to engage with the

community. I will subsequently introduce the concept of citizen journalism. Lastly I will

focus on the concept of civic engagement in which I will also draw on the limitation of

that very concept in relation to hyperlocal journalism.

2.1 Hyperlocal media

The word ‘hyperlocal’ appears regularly in discussions about the future of the news

media and potential alternative models (Metzgar et al: 2001, p.773), it has even been

referred to as ‘the next wave in journalism’ in the past (Shaffer: 2005).

Several factors can explain the emergence of hyperlocal media. Online local news

models could be expected to replace traditional local media as they were thought to be

more flexible and cheaper to operate, especially in terms of production and distribution

(van Kerkhoven & Bakker: 2014, p. 296). Moreover, the digital technique makes it

pos-sible for engaged and committed citizens use the technology to start blogging or

con-tribute to digital platforms in other ways (p. 297). The crisis in journalism as described

in the introduction of this thesis (1.1) led several news print organizations across the

United States and elsewhere to laying off staff as well as roll back coverage areas

(Chadha: 2015, p1). Scholars have argued that these closures, among other things,

created ‘news gaps’ in various towns and neighborhoods across the country (ibid).

Lo-cal journalism has thus since been under severe strain, or as Kerkhoven & Bakker put

it: "local reporting has become an endangered occupation: (2914, p.294). In previous

research Costera Meijer illuminated how underrepresented news coverage in

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neigh-borhood can effect the residents. She deems that residents claim to lose touch with

every day reality as a result of continuous one-dimensional and sensationalizes news

coverage of their neighborhood (Costera Meijer: 201, p. 13). Moreover she asserts that

participatory media - which hyperlocal media are identified as - enable residents to

ne-gotiate, make sense and give meaning to alternative, more "realistic" readings of

eve-ryday life (ibid). According to Williams et al. the public (local citizens, community group)

get a lot more to say then in much mainstream local news (2015, p.680).

Hyperlocal media is considered ‘the new kid on the block’ (Hess & Waller, 2015 p.1) in

the sense that it has developed and shaped its very own terminology as well as

defini-tion. Media characterized as ‘hyperlocal’ have been described as hybrid or civic,

com-munity statewide public affairs, and alternative newspaper movements combined with

the interactive and broadcast abilities accompanying web 2.0 (Metzgar et al: 2011,

p.774). Various scholars have attempted to theorize the phenomenon of hyperlocals.

Metzgar et al propose a definition of the phenomenon: ’Hyperlocal media operations

are geographically-based, community-oriented, original-news reporting organizations,

indigenous to the web and intended to fill perceived gaps in coverage of an issue or

region and to promote civic engagement’ (2011, p.774).

Hyperlocal media start-ups are usually founded by former journalists or concerned

res-idents to provide news about the neighborhood (Chadha: 2015, p. 1) The sites are

di-verse and usually difficult to define in terms of size, focus, and writing style, the scale

of their operations, revenue sources, and business models (p.2). Hyperlocals work with

different funding sources: from donations to advertising- and a variety of business

models ranging from profit to non-profit (Metzgar et al. 2011: p. 785) and are organized

in both “one-person operations” as well “chains” (Van Kerkhoven & Bakker: 2014,

p.305).

Although hyperlocal news sites have been welcomed with big expectations and high

potential, the sum of hyperlocal initiatives have a high failure rate; many are yet to find

a successful business model or blueprint for generating revenue over time (Chadha:

2015, p.2). As Ingram (2013) puts it: ‘The graveyard of hyper-local journalism

compa-nies is littered with bodies already’. Many hyperlocal or niche journalism have not been

sustainable (Wall: 2015, p. 802). There have been cases of websites that collapsed as

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quickly as they launched, sometimes they are victims of their own success, as well as

cases of creators that were brought into mainstream outlets (ibid).

This makes the case of CMG relevant and interesting, they

have been alive and

grow-ing since 2009 and has since been experimentgrow-ing to become and remain a viable

busi-ness. The business of CMG is financed through advertising of local businesses on the

websitea. Liena Zagare, the founder of CMG, started as an “one-person operation”

however CMG has now expanded to a chain of different sites and a team of 7 paid

journalists.

In some cases large media companies have bought up networks of hyperlocal

journal-ism sites as potential money-makers. One of these networks is Patch.com, and there is

a number of reasons to briefly concentrate on this phenomenon in this case-study.

2.2 Patch.com: How not to do hyperlocal journalism

Patch.com is an online-only community journalism platform and focuses on the

report-ing of local news in more than 900 communities across the United States (John,

John-son & Nah: 2013, 197). It was launched midst this rise of the online-connected news

consumer. It is owned by America Online (AOL), purchased in 2009 as a “passion

pro-ject” of AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong (John, Johnson & Nah: 2013, 199). One interesting

aspect of Patch is that it thus is an corporate-owned hyperlocal news company (Wall:

2015, p. 802). As amateur news blogs started to attract high numbers of visitors these

initiatives big corporates picked up on this.

The success of Liena Zagara’s at the time successful neighborhood blog on Ditmas

Park was noticed by Patch. She, among other neighborhood bloggers, sold her site to

Patch. In an article in the New York Times she stated that she then: “worked as its

director of special projects before deciding their philosophies did not mesh and starting

over on her own”

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. Which is what became CMG.

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It is remarkable that Patch did not succeed to become a sustainable business despite

the solid financial basis. The success of a hyperlocal news website is not guaranteed

solely with financial means: success is also measured by the existence of an audience.

The failure of Patch.com (Ingram: 2013) has been scrutinized largely by researchers

and journalism scholars as it pinpoints the apparent prerequisites of a healthy and

sus-tainable hyperlocal. The model that has been executed by Patch now serves

some-what as a blueprint of how not to do hyperlocal journalism. It is interesting to briefly

explore a few of the aspects that made Patch to become a failure, and relate this

blue-print to CMG. Not in the least because Liena Zagare has experienced at firsthand how

her blog collapsed after it was bought by Patch.

According to John, Johnson and Nah the Patch.com sites lack a clear engagement

with their wider communities, stories feature an overreliance on official sources, reader

(and editor) posts to stories are minimal, and Patch’s linking strategies focus on

keep-ing the reader on Patch sites (2013, p. 199). This approach to local journalism, as John

et al. note, presents questions about online community journalism’s ability to visualize,

and engage, wider communities of interest through a networked, connective journalism

(ibid).

According to Jarvis and Ingram the failure has partly to do with the business model and

partly the lack of bonding with the community. Jarvis suggests that Patch did not get its

business model in shape before multiplying its “mistakes” (2013). This is what Ingram

calls an “inherently industrialized approach to what isn’t an industrial problem” (2013).

Another important thing Jarvis points out is that Patch, according to him, sold

advertis-ing on its sites in the “old-media model”. He claims that Patch fatal error is that they act

like an old-media company. Jarvis would suggest to offer a menu of digital services to

local advertisers. His research shows that local merchants need more than ads; they

need help with their digital presences in Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and so

on (ibid).

Ingram proposes to think of hyperlocal journalism as “artisinal” rather than

mass-produced, which is what Patch did (2013). Hess and Waller link characteristics of

sub-culture to hyperlocal news phenomena (2015: p.13), which is an interesting angle that

in a way contributes to Ingram’s “artisinal” approach. Hess and Waller propose to

ap-proach hyperlocal media not as a product or object but as a cultural phenomenon (p.

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13). They conceptualize the hyperlocal turn in journalism as a “news subculture” (p.2).

Specifically:

“Literature on subculture links the concept to non-normative and marginalized practices; a re-sistance to massification; generating an authentic— sometimes confronting— sense of style; the discomforting spectacle of outsiders trying too hard to fit in; and generating a sense of shared identity and belonging often tied to physical territory. We (…) argue these are characteristics of the hyperlocal news phenomena”. (p.2).

Ingram asserts that no one is going to connect with a “local” news site if it is a

cookie-cutter version stamped out by an assembly line (2013). In this sense CMG is doing the

complete opposite of what Patch did, for them it seems, like Jarvis claims: hyperlocal

works on a hyperlocal level (2013). One thing CMG strongly invests in is the creation of

a community. Something, according to Ingram, Patch never got a handle on. Bonding

with the community seems to be something that makes hyperlocal news work at all

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Another important ingredient according to Ingram is passion. Passion, business model

and community are three things that are strongly connected when it comes to

hyperlo-cal journalism. As Ingram put it: ‘Hyper-lohyperlo-cal news companies that work, whether they

are newspapers or websites or both, are owned and run by passionate residents, and

that passion is what sustains them when the money gets tight — which it almost

cer-tainly will’ (2013).

Given the large graveyard of hyperlocal media companies these three pillars are

inter-esting to further examine, especially how they are related to each other and in

particu-lar to CMG.

2.3 Citizen journalism

In order to get to the key understanding of the concept of civic engagement it is

im-portant to take into consideration an imim-portant shift that has taken place in journalism:

the emergence of ‘citizen journalism’. The act of ordinary people creating media

con-tent that includes information (news) has become a commonly accepted practice

around the world (Wall: 2015, p. 807). Citizen journalism is now an essential part of

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news gathering and delivery in the world (Wall: 2015, p. 797).

Because it can vary so

widely depending on its purpose and formulation, citizen journalism can be hard to

de-fine (Lewis et al. : 2010, p. 166). There is no clear consensus on the definition and

moreover, several terms that describe the same or a similar phenomenon have found

their way into the scholarship on journalism. Public, civic, communitarian, open source,

participatory, networked and more generically citizen journalism (Deuze: 2008, p. 107).

Jay Rosen has adequately phrased this news form as following: ‘‘When the people

formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession

to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism’’ (2008, online).

When it comes to CMG we run into a similar struggle in terminology. One the one hand

CMG is a result of an initiative by Liena Zagare, a citizen (formerly known as the

audi-ence) without experience in journalism who started a blog about her neighborhood.

Over the past couple of years this blog has evolved into a business and a certain

de-gree of professionalization has been added to the company. Professional journalists

have been hired, which now makes CMG a semi-professional journalism company.

Citizen journalism has not necessarily been welcomed very warmly by the industry.

According to Hanitzsch the boundaries of journalism have become fuzzier than ever

(2013, p. 202). The confusion arises from the question whether these practices are

complementary or competing with traditional journalism and whether they should be

considered to be part of journalism at all (2013: p. 202).

This brings one to the fundamental question ‘what is journalism in the digital age?’ and

‘what constitutes a journalist in the digital space?’ Arguments about journalism and its

traditions and values and the online space have been happening for many years

(Ful-ton: 2015, p.363). Journalism is undergoing a fundamental re-evaluation of its

underly-ing core principles and ideas. Notions of who can speak as a journalist, what is

consid-ered journalism, journalism’s role in a democracy, the role of the audience, and the

very basis on which journalism has operated as a viable business are all being

evalu-ated as the institution of journalism intersects with digital technology (Morieson &

Ush-er: 2011, p.78). In relation to this particular case-study it is interesting to put forward a

number of tensions that came to live in discussions about citizen journalism and

tradi-tional journalism.

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According to Deuze the profession’s ideology has generally incorporated five

ideal-typical traits: public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy and ethics (2005, p.

447). The implicit thread running through each is that professional journalists derive

much of their sense of purpose through their control of information in their various roles

as watchdog, gatekeeper, and guardian for society (Lewis et al. : 2010, p. 165). Deuze

calls this ‘‘one of the most fundamental ‘truths’ in journalism, namely: the professional

journalist is the one who determines what publics see, hear and read about the world’’

(2005, p. 451).

The emergence of the internet and citizen journalism in particular has raised a number

of interesting shifts in these existing ideas about the profession of the journalist and the

perception of what constitutes a journalist in the online space. With respect to the

crea-tion of “hyperlocal content” two of the before mencrea-tioned ideal-typical traits are evidently

threatened: objectivity and autonomy.

Firstly, objectivity has had and still has a strong impact on western journalists’

under-standing of the journalistic practice and function in society (Blaagaard: 2013, p. 1078).

Although within the professional modern practice of journalism it is widely accepted

that objectivity is an ideal that cannot be reached, it is equally acknowledged that the

history of journalism has provided resistance and alternatives to the discourse of

objec-tivity (ibid). In order to perform adequately and to avoid contamination, journalists

ad-here to a set of principles and practices that restrict access of emotions, value

judg-ments and political biases to journalistic products (Blaagaard: 2013, p. 1078). These

principles may be termed journalistic objectivity as opposed to scientific objectivity and

include factuality, fairness, non-bias, independence, non-interpretation, and neutrality

and detachment (Ward, 2008: p. 19).

Objectivity as a principle in journalistic practice thus proves to be a slippery enterprise:

to what extent can a journalist be completely objective? According Boudana objectivity

conceives of journalism as a “performance” (2011, p.386). She asserts: “It is only in a

world of pressures, constraints and obstacles that a practice is valuable as a

perfor-mance. Difficulties actually appear when it is not so much the journalist’s ability that is

questioned but rather his/her willingness” (2011: p, 393). In hyperlocal journalism this

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only seem to become more of a challenge: when ‘being’ part of a community, it can

potentially get really complicated to hold on to those key principles, as certain

relation-ships already exist within a community.

Another function that lies heavily under fire is the function of the gatekeeper.

Profes-sional journalists and traditional newsrooms have lost their control of the distribution of

information. The internet and its attendant web technologies undermine this core value

in part because, in a digital environment of 1s and 0s, information is no longer scarce,

hard to produce, nor difficult to publish (Lewis et al. : 2010, p. 165). What arises with

citizen journalism is a tension for newspaper journalism in the 21st century: the

practi-cal logic of building participatory platforms to attract greater communities of users, for

economic survival as well as to foster greater civic dialogue, against the progressional

logic of retaining authority over information flow (Lewis et al. :2010, p.164).

When the information “gates” remain open and everyone can be a journalist, this

caus-es a redistribution of power. This is what Deuze calls the “powershift” (2009: p. 317).

As Deuze, Bruns and Neuberger note: “Digital and networked journalism in whatever

shape or form must be seen as a practice that is not exclusively tied to professional

institutions anymore” (2007, p. 322). The established news industry is being challenged

by alternative news websites like CMG:

“What is most important about these sites is that they provide clear and workable alternatives to the traditional separation of journalists, their sources, and the public. These are not utopian ideals (or, to some, dystopian horror scenarios). Instead, we have found practicable and (monetary, communal or intellectual) revenue-generating models for the production of news outside of or across the boundaries of the established news industry” (Deuze, Bruns & Neuberger: 2007, p. 333).

With this implication in the back of our mind it’s interesting to consider in what extent

the content of CMG is different from legacy local media. Is this modified power

rela-tionship between news users and producers (Deuze: 2009, p. 316) visible or reflected

back at in the content that CMG produces? Deuze finds this shift promising and

phrases it as “a democratization of media access” (ibid). The powershift would

accord-ing to Deuze lead to “an openaccord-ing up of the conversation society has with itself, as way

to get more voices heard in an otherwise rather hierarchical and exclusive public

sphere” (ibid). This idealistic approach sounds noble but is arguable. According to

Bak-ker, to date, there is little indication of citizen journalism supplanting traditional 'real' or

factual journalism, although it clearly does serve to amplify and illustrate certain

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senti-ments in society (XXXX,p. 196). Bakker claims that professional media are still playing

a pivotal role and are striving to manage increasing citizen participation in ways that

augment, but do not replace, their journalism (p. 184).

There is a long-standing idea that journalism is intimately tied to democracy (Wall:

2015, p. 807). Deuze argues that professional journalism emerged in the 20th Century

as one of the foundations of democratic societies around the world, and its

practition-ers came to see their work and their product as the cornpractition-erstone of the modern

nation-state (2009, p. 255). Zelizer on the other side reflects on the notion of a journalism/

democracy nexus and argues that this idea in scholarship about the understanding of

journalism is ready for retirement. She questions: “Why has democracy retained its

centrality in so much western academic theorizing about journalism, despite the fact

that multiple sources of evidence – historical, geographical, economic, political and

cultural – suggest that it is not? Why has the shelf life of democracy been given

im-munity from expiration? And why does this imim-munity in journalism scholarship continue

despite the multiple conditions that have destabilized, challenged, reduced and

dimin-ished democracy’s optimum performance?” (Zelizer: 2013, p.467).

Is CMG as an news outlet in capable or restoring the apparent relation between

de-mocracy and journalism? Which aspects of hyperlocal journalism that differ from

tradi-tional media make it possible to do so? In which ways does CMG engage with citizens,

and by doing so, which fundamental values of journalism are at stake? I will further go

into these questions in the following paragraph.

2.4 Civic engagement

News media provide a source of information that enables individuals to have

discus-sions about public issues, and these conversations in turn stimulate engagement

(Chen et al.: 2012, p. 933). This engagement is inherent to the phenomena of news in

general, but hyperlocal media seem to take this engagement to another level. ‘Where

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we excel is building community — online and off — and that comes by focusing on the

needs of all residents’

4

is stated in the ‘about’ section of all the seven hyperlocal

web-sites of CMG. CMG explicitly aims to build and serve their community, a goal that is

often phrased as ‘civic engagement’ when it comes to hyperlocal media. Metzgar

ar-gues that there is an expectation that engaging with hyperlocal news websites results

increases connection to the community (2011, p.774).

Chen considers that ‘civic engagement’ can best be captured through three

dimen-sions: civic participation (i.e. participation in civically oriented activities), collective

effi-cacy (i.e. perceived willingness of neighbors to engage in collective problemsolving)

and neighborhood belonging (i.e. feelings of attachment to one’s residential area and

neighborly behaviors). Civic engagement thus, manifests through both actions and

feelings (2012, p.333). A key difference between engagement that is promoted through

‘traditional’ news media and hyperlocal news media is that it considers engagement

within a specific neighborhood. Storytelling agents play a central role in promoting

en-gagement at the neighborhood level (Chen et al : 2012, p.933).

Furthermore there are a few assets in the design of hyperlocal news websites that

stimulate, or at least, make civic engagement possible. These are the incorporation of

user-generated content and citizen journalism through contributions of neighbors.

The-se will be discusThe-sed in the following two paragraphs. The concept of civic engagement

also has it’s limitations, which I will explore in the final paragraph of this chapter.

2.4.1 User-generated-content

According to Metzgar if the ideal of a hyperlocal media operation is a fully represented

citizenry, contributions from the audience may be expected in the form of

user-generated content (2011, p.784). Within this type of content there are four categories

suggested by Fiel and Faris (2008): The first ‘comments, critiques and conversations’,

The second is ‘reviews, features and soft news’ (own experience and expertise), the

third: ‘opinion and analysis’, and the final is ‘reporting’. All CMG websites offer a

wide-range of possibilities to react and interact with the editors as well as other readers. The

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first category of proposed by Miel and Farris is represented on the CMG websites as

visitors are invited to start or respond to a discussion under a published article or

Fa-cebook post.

User-generated-content in the context of the focus of this thesis in interesting as,

ac-cording to Graham, “a new kind of news product -one that potentially is more reflexive,

inclusive and deliberative’ can be created when comment fields are published

along-side an article” (2013, p. 125). Graham aims at one of journalism’s core functions “as

being a facilitator of and a platform of public debate” (2013, p. 125). What can this ‘new

kind of news product’ do for CMG? Inclusion of popular forms of social media are about

facilitation of everyday social interaction between citizens (Graham 2013, p. 125).

Gra-ham notes: “These are micro public spheres that ‘spring into being’ when private

citi-zens come together freely to debate a particular political/social issue of the day,

foster-ing the basic element of the public sphere. (…) By offerfoster-ing the opportunity for citizens

to contribute their perspectives, opinions and/ or expertise to journalistic content, news

media are opening up an opportunity for promoting this basic ingredient” (2013, p.

125).

But then again, realistically journalists don’t typically engage in the discussion taking in

comment fields (Graham: 2013, p. 125). Graham puts forward an suggestion for

jour-nalists to reduce the gap between themselves and their audience by reporting on

comment sections which spark popular debate. By publishing articles in which

alterna-tives and new positions are highlighted and summarized, new facts and sources are

introduced, concerns and worries are addressed, questions are answered and

addi-tional info is provided, critiques are responded to. Such an approach not only make

comment fields more accessible to readers, but also among other things, a feedback

loop between journalists and citizens is created (Graham: 2013, p. 126).

This feedback loop is potentially something that can be realized, especially in the case

of CMG as every different hyperlocal news website is run by -one- journalist. This I

would say, make it easier to monitor the comment sections, and not in the least, to

write round-ups on articles that have sparked a public debate.

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2.4.2 Contributions from neighbors

Another way of engaging and establishing connections with the neighborhood is the

participation of ‘citizen journalists’. Schaffer argues that there is a difference between

civic journalism and citizen journalism: “Civic journalism seeks to get citizens to

partici-pate in civic life; citizen journalism seeks to engage them in the media. They're not

synonymous, but they can be symbio-tic” (2005, p. 25).

The hyperlocal news websites of CMG announce in their ‘about’ section that they blend

original reporting on community news with contributions from neighbors, and tie it all up

by bringing together all the important online information relevant to residents

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.

Residents, thus, can play an active role in the coverage of their neighborhood. They

become ‘producers’ of news, as well as consumers.

2.4.3 Limitations of civic engagement

As discussed, hyperlocal news sites carry certain potentials when it comes to civic

en-gagement and such, which legacy media don’t bring about. However, there are also

limitations to the concept op civic engagement which I will briefly discuss.

The first limitation I would like to draw some attention to is the limitation of the potential

of democratizing the public conversation through participative communication on the

internet. Hannitzsch is sceptical about this process and alleges the discrepancy

be-tween the on- and offline community: ‘It may be true that in most Western societies,

everybody can be a journalist. However, not everyone acts in such a capacity. As a

consequence, it is not ‘society’ as a whole that has a conversation with itself. It is a

conversation among members of a distinguished digital information elite’ (2013, p.

204). One of the greatest misunderstandings in the debate is, according to Hannitzsch,

the fact that the overwhelming majority of content generated by individual users bears

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no relationship to citizenship and membership of a political community” (2013, p. 204).

Even if we take into consideration that the online community does not represent the

society as a whole it is interesting to question - and this again is something Hannitzsch

does - who those ‘citizen journalists’ are and whether they are in a position to

chal-lenge journalism’s central position as a social institution (2013: p.204). According to

Hannitzsch it is essential to recognize that even though the Internet gives people the

opportunity to make their voices heard, not every citizen has the desire to participate in

public conversation. He describes the group that can afford a sustained participation in

political conversation as ‘a small elite privileged, digitally literate, educated, politically

interested and media savvy individuals' (2013, p.204). Additionally, Costera Meijer

pro-poses that having a voice does not automatically imply being heard, let alone be

un-derstood (2013, p14).

Secondly, a limitation is to be found in the diversity of a neighborhood. This is an issue

that also exists in legacy media: the effort to reflect the depth and breadth of a

commu-nity. Legacy news make efforts to reflect this diversity, and while imperfect, at least

there is pressure to improve coverage of diverse and disadvantaged communities

(Metzgar: 2011, p. 780). Race, gender, class and other categories of marginalization

continue to be patterns of exclusion that do not necessarily disappear online (Wall:

2015, p. 806). Journalism diversity matters most not only as it heightens sensitivity to

cultural differences but as it strengthens the role of minority media in the struggle to

achieve the social justice and political parity that a culturally diverse society demands

(Glasser: 2009, p. 57).

When we further examine this question of ‘who has access to this potential public

de-bate that is facilitated by journalists of hyperlocal news websites’ it is interesting to turn

back to CMG while taking a closer look at the demographics of Brooklyn.

New York

City is a melting pot of cultures, ethnicities and backgrounds, the borough of Brooklyn

is no exception. Is this meltingpot represented at CMG? It still appears that legacy

me-dia in the United States (and elsewhere) are finding it challenging to bring in stories

that reflect on ethnic diversity and conjointly ethnic minorities remain underrepresented

in newsrooms. Glasser asserts:

‘

Now as familiar as the perennial warning about the eroding credibility of the press—and at times justified by it—calls for a more open and inclusive journalism come from all corners of the

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Ameri-can newsroom, especially, though not entirely, from groups with names that signal their mem-bers’ identity’ (Glasser: 2009, p. 58).

Since hyperlocal news organizations veer off from legacy media and have the potency

of producing content and to put together a team of journalists with different voices and

backgrounds it is interesting to see what CMG deals with this. In their ‘about’ section

on every hyperlocal news website CMG writes: “We cover the diversity of the

neigh-borhood”

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. Chen et al. argue that is not necessarily easy to reach that goal:

‘The challenge is to develop a common news source that provides linguistically accessible, cul-turally sensitive and locally relevant information to which residents of diverse backgrounds would turn when seeking neighborhood information’ (2012: p.935).

Since different studies have found a negative relation between population diversity in

terms of race, class and civic engagement levels (Chen et al.:2012, p. 934) it is the

question how CMG goes about and experiences this. According to Chen at el. few

hy-perlocal news sites have made a conscious attempt to give minority groups a voice in

their coverage (2012, p. 934). It is thus to be acknowledged, or at least to be taken into

consideration, that a difference in language, class or race is not a valid reason to

ex-clude certain minorities from news coverage. When the goal of CMG is to ‘cover

diver-sity of the neighborhood’ it will be interesting to find out if and how they make an effort

to give voice to groups in the neighborhood that are less easy to enter. The effort or

conscious attempt in other words, is in the hands of the journalist. Metzgar et al. put

forward the importance to remember how we imagine our communities and their

infor-mation needs and who is missing from the conversations. Hyperlocal media operations

have the potential to increase the digital divide unless they are held to higher standards

and are asked the tough questions about their coverage (2011: p. 781).

PART III Methodology

In the next chapter I will briefly discuss and justify my motivations for the approach that

I went with in this thesis. My main research question is: What are the factors involved

in creating and running a journalism-start-up?. This question will be deepened out and

reflected upon through a set academic methods. In the first paragraph I will briefly

dis-cuss why we have chosen CMG out of the dozens of hyperlocals in New York City. In

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the second paragraph I will explain why a case-study approach was used for this

the-sis. In the In the third paragraph I will briefly touch upon the thick description which is

offered as a separate chapter in this thesis (part IV). In the fourth and fifth paragraph I

will go into the theoretical research that I have undertaken to create a solid academic

theoretical framework. In the two final paragraphs I will describe the method of

collect-ing qualitative data for this thesis: firstly the semi-structured interviews and finally the

analysis of a reader survey that CMG did among readers in 2015.

3.1 Choice for CMG

Guus Ritzen and myself mapped out all hyperlocal news outlets we could find in New

York City to get a sense of the quantity and scale of potential cases. We started out by

researching the web and identified around twenty active independent hyperlocals and

two active corporate hyperlocals: patch.com and DNAinfo.com. The latter two represent

different neighborhoods in New York City but operate from those “mother” websites.

We collected data in a spreadsheet about the different websites; contact details, area

they are active in (borough + neighborhood) and the amount of Facebook likes. Those

likes varied from 441 (The Bronx Free Press) to 21.372 (Bushwick Daily) and guided

us to measure the popularity and reach of the hyperlocal news outlet. We decided that

our potential case should have at least 1000 likes on Facebook.

From the beginning we had agreed that it would be fruitful to incorporate a number of

context cases in our thesis. The decision thus, to amplify our call for a hyperlocal

case-study through the whole hyperlocal landscape of New York City was an easy one to

make. Via email we reached out to every hyperlocal news outlet on our list and

intro-duced our case. When collecting the email addresses for Fort Greene Focus,

Ben-sonhurst Bean, Park Slope Stoop, Ditmas Park Corner and Sheepshead Bites we

no-ticed a similarity in house-style and website lay-out. It then became apparent to us that

all these different hyperlocal websites are part of one mother organization, which

hap-pened to be CMG.

New York Times referred to CMG as ‘one of Brooklyn's biggest media conglomerates’

(July 16th, 2014). Despite the modest and local aspects to the organization, seven

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perlocal websites in the air certainly makes CMG a big player in the landscape of

hy-perlocal journalism.

According to Denscombe the aim of a case study is to ‘illuminate the general by

look-ing at the particular’ (2010, p. 53). ‘The general’ though, as I touched upon in my

theo-retical framework, is not set in stone for hyperlocal journalism as a genre. Different

structures of organizations can be identified in hyperlocal media outlets, same goes for

business models and motivations.

One important and unique thing about CMG started out as a ‘one-man-band’ and has

grown steadily to become a stable and respected organization with - at the time of our

research - six contracted editors. CMG came across to us as an organization that

serve their neighborhoods with passion. The tone of their articles invited us to find out

who these people are and how they reflect upon the (changing) field of journalism.

Moreover we figured that the division between sales and editorial content is an

interest-ing organizational decision.

During a Skype call with editor-in-chief Liena Zagare kindly approved our request and

encouraged all editors to participate. Editors-in-chief of Westside Rag, Bushwick Daily

and Tribeca Citizen had also responded to our emails enthusiastically. Considering

their highly different approaches, backgrounds, organization structures and areas of

reporting we agreed that those three hyperlocals would serve as perfect ‘context’

cas-es.

3.2 Case-study

In a time when journalism in undergoing tremendous changes it is not only valuable to

gain insight in the nature of these changes, it’s also interesting to keep track of all the

different corners in which the field is gaining and losing ground. Case studies allow for

that as they focus on one (or just a few) instances of a particular phenomenon with a

view to providing an in-depth account of events, relationships, experiences or

process-es occurring in that particular instancprocess-es (Denscombe: 2010, p. 52).

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As the ‘hyperlocal phenomenon’ is one of journalism’s new-kid-on-the-block, employing

the case study method will really give me the chance to deeply delve into the case as

whole entity. Denscombe states: “the case study approach works well because it offers

more chance than the survey approach of going into sufficient detail to unravel the

complexities of a given situation. It can deal with the case as a whole, in its entirety,

and thus have some chance of being able to discover how the many parts affect one

another” (ibid).

Since the field of journalism is reshaping and reinventing itself journalism start-ups pop

up like daisies worldwide. Qualitative research therefore suits journalism start-ups

firm-ly as most of them still find themselves in a pristine stage of development. Along with

the inventive and pioneering approach of the individuals behind the start-ups, new

the-ories can be generated from academic research. Beyond Journalism provides an

in-sight in the current state of this exciting field: from case-to-case but also through the

series as a whole.

According to Denscombe, one disadvantage of using the case study method is that it

‘is most vulnerable to criticism is in relation to the credibility of generalizations made

from its findings. The case study researcher needs to be particularly careful to allay

suspicions and to demonstrate the extent to which the case is similar to, or contrasts

with, others of its type’ (p. 63). By incorporating three context cases (Bushwick Daily,

Westside Rag and Tribeca Citizen) a situation will be avoided in which my case-study

will invite for generalizations.

3.3 Thick description

In part IV of this thesis I have included a context chapter in which essential contextual

information on CMG as an organization and background of the people behind the

busi-ness is provided. This serves as a ‘thick description’ and aims to describe particular

acts or events in relation to their cultural context (Denscombe: 2010, p. 328).

3.4 Literature

In the weeks leading up to our trip to New York I became familiar with the existing

theo-ry, concepts, discussions and themes by doing an extensive literature study on

hyper-local journalism, online news outlets and journalism start-ups in general. After I had

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made myself comfortable with the larger scope of this new and exciting branch in

jour-nalism I decided to delve deeper into an aspect that had interested me along the way:

community-building and community engagement through journalism.

The academic literature served as a compass through the academic field on hyperlocal

journalism and community engagement. Reading one article automatically led to the

other. The academic texts as well as case studies revealed tensions within the

aca-demic field, and not in the least highlighted practical challenges similar organizations to

CMG deal with. These different articles allowed me to create a strong theoretical

foun-dation to work with. It serves as a point of departure for my research and analysis.

3.5 Semi structured interviews

Although we both approach CMG with a different angle, the core of Guus Ritzen and

my research was carried out collaboratively. While Ritzen delves into the professional

identity of the hyperlocal journalist, I focus on civic engagement that is aimed for

through hyperlocal journalism. Both Ritzen and myself collected data through

qualita-tive research in the form of ‘semi-structured interviews’. We were given the opportunity

to interview all employees of CMG. We conducted semi-structured interviews with all of

them, separately: Liena Zagara (editor-in-chief), Dina Rabiner (director of sales and

marketing), Rachel Silberstein (managing editor and editor of Bensonhurst Bean),

Shannon Geis (editor of Ditmas Park Corner & Kensington BK), Heather J. Chin (editor

of Fort Greene Focus), Donny Levit (editor of Park Slope Stoop & South Slope News)

and Alex Ellefson (editor of Sheepshead Bites).

With the aim to put our collected data in a wider context we decided to seek contact

with other hyperlocal media outlets in New York City that we had been in touch with in

our first research phase. Katarina Hybenova from Bushwick Daily (Bushwick), Avi from

Westside Rag (Upper-Westside) and Erik Tortells from Tribeca Citizen (Tribeca) kindly

agreed to talk to us, which resulted in three context interviews.

We conducted a total of 11 interviews, which all took between 45 minutes and one and

a half hour. Most of the interviews with CMG employees were conducted in the ‘old’

office, in a private meeting room. The editors of Ditmas Park and Bensonhurst Bean

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allowed us in their home to conduct the interview. The interviews with Liena Zagare

were conducted in a café, as well as all the context interviews.

In preparation of these interviews we compiled a list of questions and subjects that

served our research goals. This interview protocol was based on an interview guide

provided by Mark Deuze, our thesis supervisor. The list served as a blueprint for the

different interviews, however, adaptations were made for the interviews editor-in-chief

and director of sales and marketing since their backgrounds and daily tasks involved

different things than the editors of CMG. Same goes for the ‘context’ interviews. We

tweaked our interview protocol depending on the situation. All of the interviews are

recorded and transcribed. I included the interview protocol and transcribed interviews

in the appendix of this thesis.

3.6 Analysis of survey

CMG did a survey among their readers in the end of 2015. The survey was created

through the Google drive survey service and spread through the mailinglist of CMG.

255 readers responded. I have scrutinized the results of the survey and included

infor-mation that apply to the body of work in this thesis.

3.7 Grounded theory

The aim of this case study is to gain insight in hyperlocal journalism which is, although

similar to community journalism, a relatively new branch within journalism. Although the

literature study helped me exploring existing theories, concepts and discussions on

hyperlocal media, journalism start-ups and civic engagement, the aim of this case

study is to generate new theories and gain new insights and perspectives on the

changing field of journalism. In order to analyze the collected raw data however, I

em-ployed a method that is also referred to as grounded theory.

According to Denscombe the point of this method is to generate theories, not to test

them (2010: p. 108). Testing theories would not suit my research as it is my goal to

explore and discover new insights that reflect on the breeding field of journalism.

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Grounded theory involves a couple of steps which help to organize, structure and

ana-lyze the raw data I collected. I started out by labeling chunks of data in terms of their

content which is referred to as open coding. This was followed by axial coding which

implies the exploration of relationships between different chunks of data (Denscombe:

2010, p. 115). By addressing different codes and finding relationships between certain

pieces of information I arrived at the main concepts, which is a process that is referred

to as selective coding.

This system of structuring the raw data is according to Denscombe considered to be

vital to any explanation of the complex social phenomenon (…). It avoids using

previ-ous theories and concepts to make sense of the data and thus is open to discovering

new factors of relevance to an explanation of that area (2010, p. 108).

PART IV Thick description

Please note: this is a collaborative part of my thesis, and written with Guus Ritzen.

Before going deeper into the results and analysis of the conducted research ‘a thick

description’ of CMG and the other hyperlocal websites that were interviewed for this

thesis, will be offered. I will expand on the history of CMG and the backgrounds of its

various employees. This will also be done for the other non-CMG hyperlocals. Also I

will delve more deeply into what it exactly is that CMG does. What are the products

they deliver? Besides bringing hyperlocal news, what else do they do?

Included in this chapter is a description of CMG’s office, its location and how it is

orga-nized. During the course of this research, the media group moved into a new office.

This new space is also included in this chapter. Lastly, as interaction with readers is an

important aspect of hyperlocal journalism and will be dealt with more closely in the

analysis chapter, I will give a short description of their readers.

As explained in the previous chapter, according to Denscombe a thick description is

needed in order for the reader to “identify significant features on which comparison with

others in the class can be made” (p. 36). Especially in this particular research this

con-text is important, as the aim of the Beyond Journalism research project is to get a more

thorough insight into new journalistic ventures that have been appearing all over the

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world.

The information in this chapter is deducted from the interviews that were held with the

employees of CMG and the other hyperlocals. Additional data was provided by news

articles on the media corporation, private documents of CMG and observations when

present at their office in New York City

4.1.1 Short history of CMG

The basis for CMG was laid in 2007 by current publisher Liena Zagare. Zagare moved

from Poland to New York City with her husband and children to pursue a graduate

de-gree in urban planning. While busy with this dede-gree, she “had all these thoughts and

ideas [about the neighborhood]” and she “wanted to make the neighborhood better.”

Her spouse then urged her to start a blog to write about what she saw in Ditmas Park.

In order to do so, Zagare started a blog on Ditmas Park. The blog was according to her

a “photo diary of life in the Brooklyn woods” (Yee, 2014), as she refers to her

neighbor-hood.

During the course of the first year the blog continuously managed to draw attention

from citizens in the neighborhood. So much so that she was able to attract advertisers

and add Mary Bakija as an editor to her team in 2008. With the money she earned from

advertisements Zagare hired freelance writers to do reporting on Ditmas Park.

Be-cause of this, she was able to focus more on the business side of running the

hyperlo-cal news blog. In 2011 media corporation AOL – that at the time was the owner of

hy-perlocal news network Patch - expressed interest in the Ditmas Park blog and bought it

from Zagare, who went on to work for Patch as their ‘national community editor’.

Not being satisfied with this new role, Zagare left Patch after nine months. It was after

this that CMG was genuinely founded. She decided to start over again and began a

new Ditmas-based blog, called Ditmas Park Corner – which to this day is part of CMG.

This time Zagare decided to start a network of hyperlocal websites instead of focusing

on just one. According to her, the reason for this was mainly financial:

“On the business side you share a lot of the costs and business often times want to

reach beyond your own neighborhood. Also Ditmas Park is a small [neighborhood].

Beyond Journalism - Hyperlocal in New York

Master thesis