Everyone’s criteria for a valuable on-line news site is different. Mine requires that professional writers are able to produce BETTER copy than they were able or allowed to do within the heavily-mediated institutional voice of daily newspapers. Otherwise, what’s the point? This attitude assumes that dullness and blandness afflicts daily journalism as much as piratical ownership and craigslist.
Joel Kramer, the former Strib editor and publisher, now launching the non-profit on-line “paper”, MinnPost.com, was fielding a stream of calls this morning. “But you got me now,” he said, “so go ahead.”
OK. What license are you suggesting to the writers coming on board that’ll make them better than they were in print?
“Well, I think it is a constant refrain from writers that they’re looking forward to doing better work. We intend to produce stories that are clearly edgier and display more courage and at the same time more informality.”
And what about the license for language?
“We won’t be using curse words.” No cussing? Shit.
Kramer cleared up a few misperceptions — some of them fomented by this site. Among them is the MPR question. The answer there is, “No. We have no equity or business relationship with MPR, or with anyone else. We did approach The Rake, but that was when were looking at a for-profit model. When we decided to go non-profit, those discussions ended.”
Still, Kramer describes MinnPost.com’s audience, (that’s the official name), as a “news-intense audience deeply steeped in the values of traditional journalism but open to the more free-wheeling aspects of the web. More to the point, they are readers who use multiple news sources every day.” He says whoever told me he foresaw an audience of “100,000 to 200,000” heard wrong. He says he sees the potential audience, “in the hundreds of thousands”.
“And we are,” he says, “totally focused on that audience.”
Still, my curiosity was always that this “news-intense” audience more or less mirrors MPR’s radio audience, and the “membership” aspect of Kramer’s financial model — where readers will be encouraged to show their support by writing checks — looked to be trespassing a bit on MPR’s turf.
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t describe it as trespassing,” he replied. “I mean, you could just as well say we were trespassing on the Star Tribune or the Pioneer Press.”
Ok, OK, loaded choice of words. But “news intense and … membership”. But no MPR business alliance/partnership?
No. I guess. What he says he is examining are “content partnerships” where MinnPost.com and a partner might “publish the best work from each other’s site.” He says he sees ways, “Our audience will overlap with other organizations.”
I asked if the $250,000 coming from the Cowles family accompanies an understanding that additional funds will come with the passing of quarters and fiscal years? The answer was, “No. The donors we’ve listed were asked only for a one-time commitment. The Knight Foundation was particularly pleased that our intention is to be self-sustaining, through sponsorships, advertising and memberships. We might get a national grant from time to time for investigative reporting or something. We will certainly be applying.”
Rumors of the fee structure for writers he says were also wrong, but $200/week for two blog posts and $600 for stories either cherry-picked from the most intriguing blog-post or assigned by MinnPost.com editors sounds an awful lot like what the rumor mill was spinning.
Kramer did say that, “Not every name on this morning’s list will be a poster,” and that commentary, beyond the voice of the blogger/poster, will be drawn “from the community”, but, “there won’t be commentary every day.” Writers, he says, will not be under any exclusivity constraints.
The presence of John Camp, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former PiPresser and best-selling crime novelist gives the site some national marquee weight. And Politics in Minnesota publisher, Sarah Janecek, gives MinnPost at least one contributor to the right of Dennis Kucinich.
Kramer says he’s open to the higher-tech gew-gaws of audio and video, but suspects that end of MinnPost.com will not be functional when the site debuts later this fall. (That’s a hoped-for start, BTW). He says he is already getting calls from other writers offering their services and is actively looking for younger writers.
“We hope to do a lot of things,” he says. “I’m just not sure we’ll be able to do them all the first year.”
I mention an oft-repeated concern around town as he worked toward his announcement. Namely that if he screws this up, if MinnPost.com doesn’t offer something appreciably better than the two dailies and/or doesn’t draw traffic sufficient to sustain itself within three or four years, it could have the effect of discouraging other investors in trying it again. I mean, not to lay on the pressure, but that’s what people are saying.
“Well, it’s always pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? No risk, no reward. There are a lot of things we have to get right and we’re working pretty hard to see that we do just that.”
Meanwhile, watching from the balcony is former City Pages editor, Steve Perry. Perry is working toward a for-profit site that would appeal to at least the faction of the “news-intense” audience that wants steady, rolling analysis on news of the day — in the vernacular of sophisticated people — and interaction with each other. Perry’s reputation will draw a different type of writer than those at the top of Kramer’s list.
Paul Schmelzer at Minnesota Monitor did an interview with Perry last week.
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