I remain unimpressed. I remember when cities lost their morning or evening newspapers and continued to function. I remember when small towns lost their papers and everyone still seemed to know everything that was going on. No, the concern about the possible demise of local newspapers sounds an awful lot like the possible demise of banks or car manufacturers, and I expect that we’ll get through all of these events just fine.

Rick Green, of the Hartford Courant has an interview with Steve Collins, who is a reporter for one of the newspapers facing potential demise. Rick writes, “News blogs, which are popping up all over, aren't the answer, Collins said, because they can't possibly provide the breadth of a local paper.”

I appreciate Collins’ situation. He may be out of a job soon. Yet, I’m not sure that I agree that blogs can’t possible provide the breadth of a local paper. I’m not finding much in the local papers around here about the Woodbridge Board of Education meetings or the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee meetings. With the exception of the videotaping of the Board of Education meetings for the government channel, I don’t believe there is anyone besides me reporting on these meetings. As to finding news about local births or high school sports scores, I’d much rather read the blog post by a grandmother whose daughter has just delivered a new grandchild or the father who has just seen his daughter win a swim meet.
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I’m not the only person to disagree. Rick Hancock comments, “I guess I have more faith in the entrepreneurial spirit of people, even reluctant newspeople, than most.” I think Rick has good reason to disagree. It seems to me that his blog is an example of the entrepreneurial spirit.

There are plenty of other good examples of the entrepreneurial spirit being alive and well in journalism. Today, I received an email from Doug Hardy, an Associate Editor at the Journal Inquirer. Doug is working with efforts to help the Journal Inquirer survive better in the new media landscape, including working with radio and television stations as well as with others in the online world. The Connecticut and Politics sections of my blog now include links to recent stories from the Journal Inquirer thanks to Doug’s efforts.

Doug is well connected to other folks showing an entrepreneurial spirit in journalism. His wife, Christine Stuart runs CT News Junkie which is a great source of reporting in the state and CT News Junkie has close ties to the New Haven Independent which is often cited as an example of the future of journalism at so many of these media conferences.

On the national level last week came news that Gannett is acquiring Ripple6. Gannet is one of the large newspaper publisher fighting to survive in this difficult environment and Ripple6 is a “team of social media marketers and developers [that] combine the disciplines of knowledge management, software development, online media and brand marketing”. It looks like the folks at Gannett understand what they need to be doing to survive.

Lewis Green has a great article about the acquisition.

Lewis writes,

According to a Ripple6 paper, research shows that people feel a stronger connection with, and are better served by, companies that interact with them online in a social environment. They want companies to help solve their consumer problems, to solicit feedback on products and services, and to develop new ways for customers to interact with the brands.

This takes me to my thoughts about the Cs and Ds of the newspaper industry. It seems like everyone is focusing on the delivery of news, the dollars that are not longer being generated, and the subsequent demise of the industry. Instead, it seems like getting back to the basics is a starting point.

First, there is content. In this world of user-generated content, content is everywhere. CNN is trying to capture content from citizens through its iReport website. Various public radio stations have experimented with gathering content online, such as the highly successful Primary Place Online run by New Hampshire Public Radio.

If all you are doing is competing with all the citizen journalists out there, you might have a slight edge because your reporters are a little better trained, but that edge is shrinking. If you’re laying off your good reporters, that edge is shrinking even more quickly.

The second C of a successful media operation is context. In this endless stream of content, some of it user generated, some of it generated by professional journalists, what matters is providing context, is helping readers understand the full story and how it relates to their lives. This is what the successful projects that tap user generated content are doing. This is what can give reporters at newspapers an edge.

The third C is community. It looks like Gannet understands this and is why they acquired Ripple6. It feels like sites like CT News Junkie and New Haven Independent get this as their readers become more involved in the sites. It seems like Doug Hardy gets this as he tries to connect the Journal Inquirer community with other media communities around the state. It isn’t about distribution. You can argue about the pros and cons of paper distribution versus radio versus television versus online. Personally, I get my information from a mix of all of these distribution channels and will as long as I can.

It has often baffled me why more local newspapers don’t get this. The local papers are the people that have the closest ties with the local communities. This is incredibly valuable and should be leveraged. In online advertising, the big bucks are going to people that can target specific communities. Newspaper organization that can help local businesses build community around their brands through smarter advertising seems to me to be ideally suited for thriving in the twenty first century.

Of course, all of this requires getting past the gloom and doom of the current crisis. It requires getting past the hubris of thinking that only professional reporters can provide quality content, and instead embracing how your understanding of content can help provide context and community. All of this requires the entrepreneurial spirit that Rick Hancock, myself and others still believes is out there in the journalism community.

When Avery Doninger was a junior at Lewis Mills High School, she was secretary of the student council. She worked hard to help organize a battle of the bands at her school and at one student council meeting was told that due to scheduling issues, the Jamfest would need to be rescheduled or moved to a different location. She, and some fellow students reached out to the community to encourage parents to contact the school administration and urge them to reconsider.

The school administration did not take kindly to being contacted by parents and confronted Avery and the other students, telling them that unless certain conditions were met, conditions that Avery did not believe were possible, Jamfest would be cancelled.

That evening at home, she wrote in her personal diary something to the effect, “Thanks to the douchebags at the central office, Jamfest is cancelled.” She went on to describe how all the calls from parents had pissed off people at the central office and she encouraged more parents to call.

The problem is that her personal diary was on Livejournal, a website where many people write there personal thoughts so their friends can see them. Some weeks later, the son of the superintendent found the diary entry and pointed it out to her mother. Her mother responded by forbidding Avery to run for re-election as class secretary. Nonetheless, Avery won the election as a write-in candidate, which the school refused to recognize.

Avery has since graduated and is spending this year as a volunteer for AmeriCorps. However, a lawsuit lingers. Avery’s mother did not believe that the school should punish children for things that they do at home. That should be the purview of the parents. Mrs. Doninger spoke with the school about appropriate punishments for using language that some find objectionable. Yet the school administration was intransigent.

Mrs. Doninger then filed a suit against the school for violating her daughter’s freedom of speech. As is typical for cases like this, they move slowly. The school argued to have the case moved from the Connecticut courts to the Federal courts. The Doningers sought a preliminary injunction to allow Avery to take her duly elected position as class secretary, but the District court did not grant the injunction. This was appealed to the Second Circuit which did not override the judges decision.

Since then, the superintendent has retired. The principal has been reprimanded for emails that she has sent violating students’ privacy. Some of these emails have been released because of Freedom of Information requests and paint a picture of a vindictive school administration seeking vengeance as opposed to protecting the school from significant disruption. In fact, it appears that any significant disruption stems not from the blog post, nor even from the email the students sent, but from the initial decision of the school administration, yet again postponing or canceling the Jamfest.

Last week, I was back in District Court, where the defense was arguing for a summary dismissal of the case. The plaintiffs presented evidence that had not been available during the hearings for the preliminary injunction and argued that the dispute of facts of the case warrants a full jury trial. The defense argued that the facts in dispute were not material and that even if they were, the whole thing should be dismissed because of qualified immunity.

The qualified immunity argument seemed especially twisted. To show qualified immunity, you need to show that reasonable people would argue whether or not the principal’s actions were legitimate. Much of this hung on whether or not reasonable people might guess that at some point in the near future the courts might overturn previous decisions that the reach of schools to punish students for what they say stops at the school gate.

Now, a reasonable school administration would probably settle this out of court, unless the school administration really wants to assert its right to reach into students’ bedrooms. So far, such reasonableness seems to have eluded the Region 10 School District.

This takes me back to Dr. Stella, who is the superintendent for the Woodbridge School District. Like many school districts, the Woodbridge District is struggling to find how to use the Internet to enhance the education of its students. Last week, Dr. Stella attended the convention of the Connection Association of Boards of Education (CABE). At this conference he attended a session entitled, “New Ways of Communicating in an Electronic Age”. The presenter was the third superintendent that I wish to highlight.

David Title is superintendent of the Bloomfield Public Schools and he spoke about his blog. As far as I can tell, Dr. Title has not used the word “douchebag” to describe people that he disagrees with. Instead, he has set an example of how superintendents can use the Internet to get the message out about what is going on at the school.

I can only imagine what would have happened if Avery attended the Bloomfield Public Schools. I imagine him telling Avery that he understands that her post was on a private diary at home and published on the Internet, which gives space for more emotional outbursts, but that he feels she should work on communicating her views in a more positive and articulate manner. Perhaps he would even have asked her to write a guest post, on his blog, about how students could better deal with their frustrations and be heard by the school administration and the public. That would have been a true example of using blogs to communicate and educate. Yet, unfortunately, Avery was not in the Bloomfield Public School system.

I, on the other hand, am fortunate. I went to the Board of Education meeting last night where the CABE conference and Superintendent Title’s presentation was discussed. After the meeting, I had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Stella about the issues of making sure that the Internet is used as effectively as possible to further students’ education while at the same time, not putting students at undue risk.

I mentioned Fiona’s Radio Show which she does every Sunday evening at 6:30. Fiona and I talk about the events of the week. It provides a great opportunity for some quality father-daughter time, and is building an archive of recordings that Fiona will be able to go back years hence, to find out what her life was like when she was seven. I suggested that perhaps some Sunday, Dr. Stella could call into Fiona’s radio show.

Dr. Stella was intrigued. He suggested that Fiona should find a time to come down to his office and tell him about her radio show. That is why my daughter has gone to the superintendent’s office this afternoon and why I am pleased about it. Dr. Stella and Dr. Title are examples of superintendents working hard to use new communication tools to improve their schools. I’m sorry that Avery didn’t have a superintendent like that to deal with, but I hope that this story, and others like it will be an encouragement to superintendents across Connecticut to move into a Twenty First Century that teaches and encourages intelligent use of new communications media.

I'm rushing off to other things, so for now, I'll simply post a link to the slideset on Flickr.

CT Marriage Day.

Note: As with pretty much everything I post on online, these pictures are shared with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. Basically, if you want to use them, feel free. Just let people know where to find the originals.