Oh Look, More New Business Models For Reporting On City Hall Politics
from the ain't-so-hard dept
We were just talking about how ridiculous it is when people insist that without traditional newspapers, no one will actually report on local politics. And here's yet another example of why that's apparently not as big a problem as people said. It's a story of Publicola, a Seattle-based startup that's built a business on covering local politics making use of various insiders (which may horrify traditional reporters, but it appears to be working). And that's the point: if there's demand, there are lots of business models that can and will work. In fact, we're seeing they already are working.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: journalism, local reporting
Companies: publicola
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News by press release is bad. News by insiders providing their one sided view is, well, sort of useless, no?
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Re:
So should we never listen to the people closest to the story because their close-up view makes them 'biased'?
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re #1
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That site isn't printing canned press releases from the political parties (in Seattle's case, one political party), and being the local politicians' lapdog.
Maybe if the "acclaimed" Seattle PI had modeled their business more like this site and less like a "traditional" old school paper (actually worse than an old school paper since there was very little critical reporting of the local politicians) they might still be in business (other than a shadow of its former self online).
It's interesting to compare the seattle PI online site to this one. The differences are striking in regards to local reporting. It will be interesting to see which one will come out on top. Somehow I don't think it will even be a contest.
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So ummm.....
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