If you’ve followed this blog you know that I am a consistent advocate for transparency in government leadership, and the topic was raised a number of times during last year’s election season.  I appreciate the paper bringing focus to this issue, and look forward to the conversations that result.

Here’s the full text of my editorial submitted for today’s edition:

Most people don’t like to have their judgment questioned or their mis-steps revealed, less so in front of other people. It’s human nature to want to be well regarded and to avoid embarrassment. So we can empathize with elected officials and other community leaders who don’t like the “burning sensation” that can come when their decisions or deliberations are exposed to the bright light of the public view.

But does the potential sting of that exposure mean we should shy away from the pursuit of transparency in those matters? Or do the potential dangers of power abused for personal gain, fraudulent use of taxpayer resources or other wrongs trump the temporary personal discomfort of those who have asked to be representatives of each of us in matters that affect all of us?

Maybe we can’t imagine a modern “Watergate” happening at the local or state level, and we know that most public servants are trying to do the right thing most of the time. But we also know that regardless of political party affiliation or the best of intentions, human beings are complex and historically subject to the temptations of influence and authority. We also know that in difficult economic times, there is no room for even the trivial mis-use of tax dollars.

So let our community leaders strive not just to meet the basic legal requirements of disclosure and transparency, but to proactively offer the documents, reports, data and on-the-record conversations that will make members of the public their collaborators in government efficiency, instead of their adversaries in a struggle for power and information. Let those who have volunteered to be stewards of our hard-earned dollars be completely accountable to our questions, our concerns, our challenges to their judgment…even when it’s uncomfortable, and even when it might lead to embarrassment. And when an elected official struggles with the burdens of disclosure or the challenges of transparency, let the rest of us affirm with our words and our votes that we will always reward those who favor sunshine over secrecy.

The board is a volunteer group of community members who meet regularly with the paper’s editorial staff to discuss issues facing our area, and to help ensure that the viewpoints expressed by the paper are the result of careful consideration and broad consultation.  In the end, it’s the Palladium-Item staff (and not the advisory board members) who craft the resulting columns, but Dale McConnaughay and others responsible for that task rely on the input received (and strong disagreements aired) through the board’s private conversations.  They also regularly invite community leaders to meet with the board for updates and discussion about projects underway.

This is a bit of an odd pairing, to be sure.  In the past I’ve not been shy in this space about pointing out some of the ways in which I think the paper could improve in its journalistic role in Richmond, and sometimes I’ve just plain disagreed with their editorial positions or the framing of their news stories.  I’m sure that there will be editorials written while I’m a board member that don’t represent my personal views.

But I’ve also found that the Palladium-Item and its staff have not only been willing to fully engage the constructive criticism it receives from me and others, they remain one of the most central spaces in our community for the exchange of information, ideas and conversation about the place we live.  One of my personal goals is to help raise the quality of public discourse in Richmond, Indiana, and so I’m honored by this invitation and look forward to serving.

Whether it is the 2009 Christmas Eve Senate passage of a huge, and hugely controversial, health care reform measure by Democrats narrowly controlling the U.S. Senate or, closer to home, Republicans and Democrats waiting until after a general election to craft their respective political handiwork, this is the stuff that alienates and isolates the public from those who have sworn to represent their best interests.

Through any such conversation we must of course be sensitive to Mr. Welch’s experience along the way.  I certainly wish him the best in recovering his health, and appreciate the years of time and service he has given to the Richmond community and the residents of District 5.  It’s not easy to be a political figure in the public spotlight even when you’re healthy, and so we know that it must have been particularly hard on Bing and his family to have health concerns and questions about his ability to serve in that role all mixed in together.

But when someone is elected to represent the interests of voters, their own story is not the only story that needs considering.  Calls for privacy and sensitivity are legitimate to an extent, but I think elected officials at any level should be held to a higher standard than private citizens when life events affect their ability to do their job.  When a health issue actually prevents someone from doing the job at all, or from making the case to voters that they should be re-elected, that’s when the interests of their constituents are most vulnerable, and the most in need of the protection that comes from extreme candor and accountability.

My perspective on this is hardly objective – I campaigned for most of a year for a seat on Council and now someone else will be selected after campaigning for part of an evening.  But one of the mantras repeated by candidates in all parties during the recent campaign was that in order to move Richmond forward, we have to be willing to have hard conversations about sensitive topics without taking it personally.   Talking about what’s best for the voters of District 5 and for City Council is one of those conversations, and those who would suggest that we shouldn’t go there because it might hurt the feelings of the Welch family, or who say that a thirst for information should be satisfied by just trusting that the right thing was done, are missing the point.

Make no mistake, no one is suggesting that any laws were broken or that the local Republican party isn’t well within its rights to caucus and appoint a new District 5 representative until the next election.  You could make an argument about what might be more ethical or “fair” to voters, but in this case and many others, “fair” doesn’t necessarily line up with what’s “legal” according to Indiana law or what’s strategic for a political party.  Like it or not, we have to respect that until the law is changed.

But the point the Pal-Item editorial makes (and that I agree with) is that if we want members of our community to feel like their voices matter in the course of electing and working with government leadership, then we must have a higher standard of transparency and communication on the part of those leaders.  If the motivating vision for would-be leaders in a political context is “win a victory at any cost” instead of “do the right thing for the community,” then we’re not going to make it very far as a city.

We don’t know what really happened behind the scenes with Mr. Welch’s health and subsequent decisions by his party about how to handle his seat on Council; their choice was to share as little information as possible, and only when repeatedly asked to do so.  In the absence of the information that should have been forthcoming, we’re left with the appearance that Bing Welch’s health issues were exploited for political gain, and there’s no forward motion for Richmond that comes from that.

The New York Times

According to The New York Times website, home delivery of their Sunday edition is available where I live in Richmond, Indiana.  Earlier this year I tried to take them up on that, buying a subscription online and eagerly awaiting that first Sunday morning when I would get to indulge in a paper-reading experience long enough to get me through at least one cup of coffee.

But that first Sunday, the paper didn’t show up.  ”Oh, yeah, that’s probably just some issue getting you in the circulation system,” the phone rep said when I called.  ”We’ll get it to you next week.”

Week two, no paper.  ”Sorry about that, don’t know what happened there.  Hold on while I call the distribution center.”  They concluded it was just another circulation issue, and assured me it had been straightened out for sure this time.

Week three, no paper, and the phone rep was equally apologetic, but had no additional routes to pursue.  ”Let me make sure I understand,” I said, “you theoretically offer home delivery in my area, but in my case, there’s nothing you can do to make that actually happen?”  The best she could do was offer to put a manager on the phone, but then when she tried to do that, she said all the managers were busy at the moment, and so one would have to call me back.

I cancelled my ethereal subscription and abandoned all hope of that particular luxury for now. But it seems worth noting that with newspapers fretting day in and day out about attracting and retaining readers, the least that one like the New York Times could do is coordinate their circulation operations to put a paper in the hands of people ready and willing to pay for it. If that part of the business model is falling apart, I think that puts them somewhere between “not likely to prosper” and “doomed.”

I don’t take any pleasure in making that assessment.  Apart from still longing for a leisurely Sunday morning paper-in-hand experience, I long for a time when the hard work that goes into high quality journalism is again appreciated and valued enough that papers like The New York Times and even my local Palladium-Item can again be a centerpiece of public discussion.

It was fascinating to watch the film Page One, which documents a few days in the life of The New York Times and its staff as they talk to sources, discuss angles on stories, bid goodbye to laid off co-workers and consider the future of their industry.

The film is part love letter to what The Times has been, part behind-the-scenes chronicling of how the paper is made, and part rumination on the possibilities for what will become of the newspaper in the age of the Internet.  It’s narrated by NYT reporter David Carr, who is fiercely protective of the paper’s reputation and role in society, and Page One doesn’t apologize for portraying The New York Times in an overall favorable light.   The few times when its fumbles and failures (Judith Miller’s Iraq WMD reporting, the Jason Blair scandal, etc.) come up, they’re quickly swept into the bigger picture of how all the good it does outweighs those unfortunate course corrections.  But even with that bias, it’s a great  look at the roller-coaster ride of producing a modern print newspaper.

The Palladium-Item

In April of 2010 I took the time to post here about why I was canceling my print subscription to The Palladium-Item, Richmond’s daily newspaper, and so it’s only fair that I take some time to note that I re-subscribed early this year and have continued my subscription since.  A few things happened to prompt that:

The first was that I was running for local political office for much of 2011, and it felt important to see the print edition of the paper as everyone else would see it – the prominence and layout of news articles, the placement of photographs, the political ads (mine included) sprinkled throughout.  This was quite useful, and a number of times it meant that I could see how the political coverage was coming together in ways the online version of the paper didn’t necessarily show.  (As I’ve said elsewhere, I also think the Palladium-Item did an outstanding job covering this election, devoting significant amounts of their already strained resources to provide voters with unprecedented levels of information about candidates…that alone feels worth having supported.)

Second, Kelly noted one day that when she only reads the paper online, there’s much less of a sense of knowing what’s going on in the community.  This is ironic given that there’s probably more information about community events and happenings online than there ever can be in the print edition, but I agreed with her that the experience of serendipitously encountering an upcoming play, fundraiser or art show is much more intact while turning the pages of the paper than it is when browsing a website.  You have to do a lot of clicking and scrolling to find the same information online, and there’s still some value in the editorial and even pay-for-visibility processes that go into raising something to visual prominence within a finite amount of space.

(I should note, too, that there are times when some content from the print edition of the paper can’t be found online at all.  I saw this firsthand a few weeks ago when they were able to publish in printed column form my observations on the closing of Really Cool Foods, but because of some licensing issues, it couldn’t be redistributed online.  But the print edition readership is attentive – I had a lot of people coming up to me for days afterward to mention the column.)

Third, one of my reasons given for canceling my subscription last year was the relative chaos and toxicity of the public conversations happening on the paper’s website comment sections, and they’ve since addressed that to a large degree.  Just this fall, the paper switched to using Facebook for story comments, which requires commenters to use their real name (as governed by Facebook) while still leaving the option for anonymous users to share their views elsewhere on the website.  Yes, there are plenty of privacy concerns that come with depending on Facebook for this function, but in this case I think the benefits outweigh those concerns.

Lastly, over the year I’ve just come to have a new appreciation for the role a daily newspaper plays in the life of the community, and the role that the Palladium-Item plays in the life of Richmond and Wayne County.  In the past I think I’ve blamed some of the lack of debate or civic engagement in our community on the paper’s own choices – what to cover, how to cover it, etc.  There’s no doubt that those choices make a difference, but I’ve also come to see that the choice not to be engaged in public life is unfortunately one that many members of this community make for themselves on a regular basis, and no amount of great reporting or special features are going to change that alone.

Further, if I imagine a day when the Pal-Item announces that it is closing its doors, I can only see Really Bad Things that stem from that when it comes to our community’s ability to address the challenges in front of it.  In the past I might have thought that citizen journalists or some of the other less formalized news-gathering efforts in town would step in, but my recent experience is that Richmond doesn’t nearly have the critical mass of people and platforms in place to really make that work.  So even with limited financial and personnel resources, even with an over-dependence on advertising, even with editorial or coverage choices I might disagree with, a functioning daily Palladium-Item is a much better thing for Richmond than no paper at all.

My concerns and suggestions from past critiques still stand; I still hope the paper (and the industry as a whole) is able to move toward a model that blends print and online editions more seamlessly, that allows me to pay money to see fewer advertisements, and that continues to provide unique value through a focus on in-depth local reporting and commentary.  I’m even looking for ways to personally contribute directly to that focus – more on that later.

But for now, I’ll continue supporting the existence of the Palladium-Item with my subscription dollars and appreciating it as a unique link to the place I live.

What’s your current relationship with your local paper?  And can you drop your copy of the Sunday Times off at my house when you’re done with it today?

I want to be careful to say that I don’t write about this trend in this space with any promise or implication that my election or anyone else’s could prevent individual crimes or save lives.  We know that no elected official and not even the best trained and funded police forces can prevent individual violent crimes when there are so many other background factors that go into these horrific events.

But I think our reaction to this trend as a community will speak greatly about our future prospects for building a version of Richmond that is safe, vibrant and thriving.

If we follow initial temptations to drift toward finger-pointing, increasing fear, vigilante justice and further isolation from each other as a solution, we risk unhelpfully turning against each other as members of an inter-dependent community.  In tough economic times, it is precisely because of increasing fear and isolation that the most troubled and under-served individuals in our society turn to more and more desperate and dangerous actions to survive.

People talk often about wanting smaller government and more individual freedoms, but a city with those qualities is also a city made up of people who know how to work together despite differences, to care for those among us who are at risk or in need, and to engage in our shared responsibilities around building relationships and resolving conflict, instead of abdicating that responsibility to centralized authority figures or resorting to violence.

So, how does a community address this particular kind of troubling trend? Is it about community policing and neighborhood watches and more funding for law enforcement? Maybe.

But could it also involve more interpersonal accountability, healthier families and neighborhoods, cultural shifts away from inherent fear of those who do not look or act like we do, examining the media messages we consume and what they encourage about problem-solving, better education of our children, and new models for how individuals can be valued, have self-worth and make a living? I think so.

City Council and city government has a role to play in that, but so do we all. It’s an intricate puzzle and no one elected official, election or legislative decision is going to affect our violent crime rate overnight. But if we step back from a fear-based response and look at the big picture, we can as a community decide to make changes that begin to address this and all of the interrelated issues we face.

The article does a good job of summarizing the challenges of blight as amplified by rough economic times: property owners who might already struggle with maintenance and upkeep are even more at risk of letting a given structure or piece of land fall into disrepair when finances get tight and layoffs and foreclosures are looming.  With such a high percentage of Richmond’s residences being rentals, there’s possibility for further disconnect between the state of the property and the owner’s involvement in it.

My impression from the article and from the conversations I’ve had with city leaders is that Richmond is generally doing what it can to respond to the impact of decaying properties.  But it can be discouraging to know that the process of getting a blighted property owner’s attention is often drawn out over a long time and a lot of paperwork, not to mention expenditure of taxpayer dollars: wait for the property to be reported as blighted, flag it, mow it or repair it and bill the property owner, wait for the bill to go unpaid, place a lein on the property, and THEN there MIGHT be a financial incentive for some action.  This routine may bear the customary government trademarks of caution and glacial due process, but it doesn’t recognize very well the shorter-term impacts (financial and social) of a property falling into disrepair, and the ripple effect it can have on other areas nearby.

That particular concern is probably better taken up by neighborhoods and communities of neighbors than by municipal government, though.  When a given area has a strong sense of community or neighborhood identity, perhaps through the work of an active neighborhood association, it’s harder for any one property or resident to get left behind.  When people know their neighbors and understand what personal and financial constraints are at work, there may be more opportunities to lend a hand and stop a bad situation from getting worse in a way that more deeply impacts the whole neighborhood.  When we have vibrant and accessible public spaces, including a healthy downtown and surrounding arts and cultural districts, we have more opportunities to pool together our shared investment in the health of the city.

Of course, blight is a symptom of some other troubling trends as much as it is a cause.  Richmond can check off many of Wikipedia’s list of sources of urban decay:

It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape…Urban decay has no single cause; it results from combinations of inter-related socio-economic conditions—including the city’s urban planning decisions, the poverty of the local populace, the construction of freeway roads and rail road lines that bypass the area, depopulation by suburbanization of peripheral lands, real estate neighborhood redlining, and xenophobic immigration restrictions.

As much as we should be working to address blight in Richmond, we need to also develop a holistic view of these underlying causes, and develop a long-term approach that not only focuses on revitalizing Richmond’s residential areas, but also on building a vibrant and self-reliant city as a whole.

The article contains some interviews with downtown business owners, some perspective on the history of the Main Street organization there, and some talk of renewed activity from merchants and business owners (myself among them) in helping make the area thrive.  But there’s something missing from the picture the article paints.

One key angle that the article glosses over is the role that the rest of the community plays in creating and maintaining a thriving downtown.  While there’s certainly some role for business owners and merchants to play in creating a thriving downtown, it’s not entirely their burden to bear.  Retail districts live and die by the shopping choices of their customers, and so it seems important to recognize in any conversation about the health of a downtown that at least some of it is dictated by the “consumer culture” of the surrounding community.

It would be interesting to interview some “regular citizens” and ask them where they tend to shop, and how they perceive the downtown area.  “Given the choice between going downtown to support a business there and going to the mall or a big box store, how do you decide?”  Are they willing to pay a little more for products and services knowing those dollars stay in the community longer (thus supporting the long-term health of the area), or will they always prioritize convenience and the lowest available price?

It also seems worth looking at the environment of governmental and political support surrounding downtown.  Is it possible that city, county and state laws might be negatively impacting the ability of downtown business to thrive?  Is it possible that our approach to zoning, transportation, taxpayer-funded economic development and taxation are favoring non-local chain businesses over those who would choose to start and grow a small business in the place they live?  Is it possible that politics and personalities are at times standing in the way of a thriving central business district instead of nurturing it?

I’ve blogged about these ideas before:

The value we get from a strong and diverse local business community is hard to see when compared as a “bottom line deal” against the attractions of the “big box” stores. And I’m not suggesting that these larger retailers don’t have a place in a strong local economy. But my hope is that we’ll see the Target store closing as yet another indicator of an important trend. By putting so many of our eggs in baskets that lack the personal ties and community investments that our local businesses are built around, we set ourselves up for even greater disappointments and more noticeable disappearance of the business ethic, entrepreneurship, and innovative spirit around which Richmond has historically been built.

There’s no question that the economic health of our downtown is based on complex systems with lots of variables.  The business owners and downtown merchants are mostly already doing their part – they’re running their businesses and they’re engaged in the life of the business district and the wider community.  As a small business owner myself, I know that there’s probably not a whole lot of time left over for those hard-working folks to ALSO do the marketing, advocacy, legislative and policy work needed to help downtown compete against strip malls and big box stores.

So what role does the rest of the Richmond community have in creating a thriving main street area?  How do your choices make a difference in the health of downtown?

I’ve gone from subscribing to the paper seven days a week, to just the Friday/Saturday/Sunday package, to just the Sunday edition.  Here’s why I’m going to finally let go of receiving a print edition altogether:

1. The print edition has been taken over by advertising. I understand that ads have long-been the bread and butter of a newspaper’s business model, and I’m willing to tolerate some reasonable proportion of ads to content in order to get the content.  But when the roll of paper that shows up on my porch is seemingly made up of 95% advertising and 5% content, I can’t justify it.  The resource usage is ridiculous given that I immediately recycle or throw away that 95%, and I just don’t like the sense that I’m primarily paying to support a conduit for advertisers to influence me, instead of for something that’s primarily a journalism product.  (For what it’s worth, the online edition has also been taken over by advertising, but at least there I can automatically block out the ads with software.)
2. The local news coverage is understandably but unacceptably thin. With a shrinking staff of reporters and more pressure than ever before to produce headlines that sell papers, I find the coverage of local and regional issues and news to be lacking (at least according to the standard I put forth two years ago).  When they do cover local issues, it’s rarely with a depth and perspective that challenges and engages me as a reader and citizen.  I believe the Pal-Item staff has great intentions and are working their butts off to cover as much as they can, but that doesn’t mean the P-I is sufficiently living up to its role as the local newspaper.
3. The Palladium-Item hosts some of the most toxic public conversations happening in our community. If you read any given article on the Pal-Item website, there’s usually at least one person (and sometimes many people) offering uninformed, insulting, immature or outright hateful comments.  The most egregious comment-makers are sometimes reprimanded or even banned, but it hasn’t changed the tone of the general conversation.  When I talk to other people out in Richmond about the Pal-Item website, our conversation almost always turn to the harm being done by the online discussions happening at pal-item.com.  On principle, I don’t want to help fund that conversation space any more.  It’s only fair to note that the Pal-Item also facilitates some very helpful conversations too via their “PI Live!” online interview segments – more on that below.
4. It’s not my job to support a struggling business for the sake of offering support alone. I’m sad about the decline of print journalism, and I’m especially sad that it’s declined so far in my town, which sorely needs a good local paper.  But I don’t think it’s my job to keep funding a model that isn’t working, just because I’m nostalgic.  I’ve stayed on with my subscription as long as I have somewhat out of guilt – “oh no, I don’t want to contribute to the downfall of the newspaper industry” – but it’s increasingly clear that that industry hasn’t sufficiently regarded trends threatening its existing business models, and it’s not my job to bail them out.
5. I can get the same information for free online. I’m Internet-connected to the point of lunacy, and so I can pull up the tidbits of Palladium-Item content that I’m interested in at a moment’s notice on one of the glowing rectangles I surround myself with all day.  Sometimes I even learn that information sooner via social networking sites and other community resources.

So, with all of those things considered, I can’t think of a reason to keep paying to have a roll of ads (with a sprinkle of articles thrown in) show up every week.

But make no mistake, I WILL give the Palladium-Item my money again – maybe even MORE money – if the conditions are right!  Some possible scenarios:

1. They find a way to bring in additional reporters or other staff to produce a more substantial and well-rounded news product.
2. They allow me to pay a slightly higher subscription fee in order to not receive all of the ads that come with the Sunday edition.
3. They make available an online edition that doesn’t have advertising at all, or that at least implements it much less intrusively and much more tastefully.
4. They charge a small fee for live viewing of community events and interviews with community leaders (and then make a time-delayed version available a bit later).
5. They more fully embrace citizen journalism and crowd-sourced content, while avoiding ridiculous copyright/licensing policies.

Print journalism will either reinvent itself, or it will fade away.  The Palladium-Item will either reinvent itself, or it will fade away.  In the meantime, I’m done with supporting the in-between option – it doesn’t work for me.

What about you?  If you’ve kept your subscription to a print newspaper, what factors support that?  If you canceled or never had one in the first place, why?

1. Watchdog journalism involves writing stories that hold public officials accountable for their actions or stories that help to right wrongs in the community, for example. In what ways could we improve in this area?

The Palladium-Item is to be commended for its consistent presence at government and institutional meetings, no matter how boring or routine they are.  That said, the paper often seems to be getting its stories out the door about important or controversial issues just as those items are reaching some sort of final decision point.

At some level I’m sure this is what many decision makers and news makers would prefer – their jobs are easier when there’s less time for the public to be outraged before it’s “too late.”  And it’s true that it’s still the responsibility of the citizenry to make itself aware of what issues are before, say, Common Council, and not depend entirely on the paper to note items of possible interest.  But I would be pleased to see the Palladium-Item try to maintain even more context on community issues that are under discussion, before they’ve reached a point of ostensible “no return.”

On the other side of the matter, there’s the issue of accountability once a wrong or disservice has been committed.  The general “media strategy” practiced by most public figures in this community when they’re involved in something controversial is “wait a few days and everyone will have moved on to something else.” They’re generally right that the collective memory of the community is subject to manipulation and distraction – hey, what’s that shiny thing over THERE….oh wait, sorry – and so we do need the paper to look back at how decisions were made and hold the decision-makers accountable.  It can be tough sometimes when the mindset of the reporter understandably becomes “how many more stories can I do about disingenuous plotting by council members to de-fund the Human Rights Commission, we already DID that one?”   But know that nonetheless, I think there’s a real thirst in this town for follow-up and perspective on those kinds of things, because they help us remember what we did wrong, and how we can do better next time.

And when election time rolls around, don’t just print the candidates` answers to questionnaires and their prepared responses at a debate – show us their voting record, their public statements (or noticeable lack thereof) about important issues, their actual contributions to the community (instead of their provided list of affiliations).  Tell us their story in a way that fits into the larger narrative of the community, and don’t take their word for it.

2. The Sunday edition of the Palladium-Item has, by far, our biggest single-day circulation. Past feedback tell us its the day our readers have the most time to spend with the paper. It’s also an important day to our advertisers because of the bigger audience it enjoys. What could we do to make that edition special for you?

When I sit down to read the Sunday paper, I don’t want to just read articles, I want to have an experience.  Yes, I want it to be like reading the New York Times.  I want there to be options, different subject mater, formats and voices.  I want to be challenged and amused and provoked, and then I want to sit back and think about that, and then I want to move on to another article or section and do it all over again.

The current experience of reading the Palladium-Item on Sunday is about a 10-15 minute process on average, and some of that is getting all of the advertising circulars separated out and thrown away so I can tell how much “real” content is left.  That’s not even enough time to get me through a cup of coffee and breakfast, let alone a lazy Sunday morning.

Okay, I know that it’s unlikely the Pal-Item is going to be able to ramp up content production to NYT Sunday levels.  And I know that short of a rich uncle depositing some bags of money in your laps, you’re physically limited by the number of staff you can afford to have working on that edition.  But if you have resources to expend on making the Sunday edition “special,” please make sure you focus on expanding your reporting and news analysis – that would feel very special to me.

3. We want our Web site to be viewed as a primary source for breaking news in our area. How can we make that happen? What would that look like on pal-item.com?

I’ll tell you exactly what it looks like: collaboration with other sources of local news to display their headlines and links to their stories on your site.  Yes, I really said that and no, I’m not kidding.  With your current staff resources, you can’t expect to always be the first news organization to break a story, and so you have to position yourself to still be the place where people come to read about breaking news, even if it’s not your content. If they know that if they go to Kicks96/WHON and G101.3/WKBV and Twitter and the EDC site and the Chamber site and WayNet.org and so on to find stories and information you don’t have yet, then pal-item.com will always just be one stop along the way for most users, not a primary source.  You need critical mass.

The nice thing is that the pieces are all almost in place for this to happen.  If you can collaborate with other news reporting / news breaking entities to insure that RSS feeds are readily available, you can build a “breaking news portal” with little technical effort.  Yes, they might build their own breaking news portal too, but that’s okay.  Really, trust me.

Also, crowdsource it.  Find trusted local readers (even if they have conflicts of interest and affiliations and biases) and give them the power to post information directly on your breaking news pages (or via their own RSS feeds, Twitter streams, etc).  Don’t moderate it, don’t filter it, or if you do, let other readers do the filtering and moderating along with you.  Yes I really said that, no I’m not kidding.

4. Traditionally, newspapers have had a leadership role in their communities, and that’s something we would like to continue here. How would you suggest we take a greater role in that?

As I think you and your colleagues know, being in a true leadership role is not something you can necessarily choose or create, it’s something that’s earned over time by consistent acts that bring something to the community with integrity and perspective.  The paper has one of the loudest voices in town when it comes to shaping the thoughts and conversations of our everyday lives.  If I were running the Pal-Item, I would ask every day, “does our news product and the work of our staff use our loud voice in a way that builds up the community, informs and challenges our readers with new and different perspectives they’re not getting elsewhere, and helps create or promote a vision for a sustainable, enjoyable future that can be enjoyed by all?”  If there are times when the answer is “no,” make changes and move on.  If there are times when the answer is “yes,” then you’re serving in an important leadership role, keep it up.

I know the values implied in this question are very different from the traditional journalistic imperatives that shaped a newspaper’s role in a town for so long, but times they are a changin`.

5. What can we do to improve customer service?

I’ve never had a negative customer service experience with the Palladium-Item.  That said, one weird thing you could resolve is the way you ask people to submit information or letters to you through your website.  There’s the filling out of a form and the cramming of text into a small text box, which is totally inconvenient if you’re submitting a press release that’s already been prepared as a PDF or Word DOC.  It’s understood that the Pal-Item staff use e-mail (and sometimes you print their addresses in the paper), so why not provide direct e-mail as an alternative to the weird form?

Also, take the lead in getting this community to use QR Codes.  Please? Thanks.

…

Thanks to Jason for asking for reader/public input on the paper’s operations and future.  If you have your own thoughts on what the local paper needs to do to stay relevant, engaging, and, ahem, solvent, feel free to share here or on Jason’s blog post.

On one hand, you’ve got the City painting a picture of being left out of the key parts of the relationship the EDC has with its Richmond constituents, having to fork over $730,000 without appropriate representation.

You’ve got a County official noting that the City is as well represented on the EDC board as the County or other entities, and that things are working just fine as they are, while the Chamber president notes that there may be a conversation to be had, but that the current actions being taken are too poorly timed.

What’s going on here?  Everyone seems to be making reasonable statements on the matter that represents the point of view of the entities they serve, but it sounds like they’re having the conversation with each other for the first time on the pages of the newspaper. ARGH!

If indeed the “conversation” was triggered by a City Council resolution refusing to designate its usual fund contribution to the EDC budget, then that seems like a really poor way to start things off. It sets up a battle full of pressure points and high-stakes leveraging, and needlessly sensationalizes the issue. Councilman Phil Quinn noted that they’re trying to “send a statement” – why do that with a public vote, when you could do it in a meeting, e-mail message or even postal mail? I suspect we’d be a lot farther along if there’d been in-person meetings between City, County, and Chamber officials trying to hash this out before going public with it, and while I don’t know firsthand that there wasn’t one, I suspect that they skipped that part.

By the same token, County and Chamber officials should not have responded in kind for a news story, using the media for power plays. When you say things like “it doesn’t make any sense to me,” or “this is extremely untimely” for the press, it’s a kind of public disapproval and shaming, even paternalistic finger-wagging, that can only serve to inflame whatever tensions might already exist. It also makes us look like we’re a community in chaos, which is exactly what economic development efforts don’t need. Instead, officials should have either refrained from commenting in any detail while noting that conversations are ongoing, or at least framed their concerns more positively – “We’re concerned about the timing and the reasoning here, but we’re ready to work with each other to understand everyone’s needs and broker a solution that works best for our citizens.” Would that have been so hard?

Yes, I’m basing all of this unsolicited advice on a single Pal-Item news story, and there may be other pieces of the puzzle not yet reported, but I think the theme here is not a new one for our community.

I’ve discussed the kinds of power struggles that are already built into the structure of our community building organizations, and when you throw in poor (or total lack of) communication on top of that, things are only going to get worse. I think it’s fine for community leaders to act shrewdly in the fulfillment of their vision for a better Richmond and Wayne County, but this cannot involve closing the door to dialog with other stakeholders – early and often.  Too frequently, we hear about one organization or government entity “scratching its head” at the actions of another, and then we throw up our hands and wonder why there’s little public confidence in our prospects for economic revitalization. Let’s connect some dots here, folks.

Mayor Sally Hutton is quoted as saying that “The bottom line is we want to work together…We will work something out.” Let’s hope that, for everyone involved, there’s not only an intention to work together but some actual mechanisms by which that might happen. These community leaders need to get in a room together TODAY, and they shouldn’t leave until they’ve got a joint media statement prepared that lays out a much more positive path forward. Richmond and Wayne County deserve at least that level of collaboration.

Update on 1/6/09: in an article today, the Pal-Item notes that the City Council has approved their contribution to the EDC’s budget, contingent upon a future appointment to the board.  This comes in the form of a 1-year agreement instead of the usual 4-year term.  According to the article, “No time frame was set for the first meeting between representatives of the city and county.”  This also comes on the same day as an announcement about the new EDC President.