Because we at Technically Media produce journalism, I am often asked if we are a nonprofit. We are not, though we produce and distribute free information about communities, employ full-time journalists and pursue something resembling truth.
Since the question comes up often, I want to share a few of the very basic reasons why we are not a nonprofit. There are three stages to the answer.
Continue reading Why is Technically Media not a nonprofit?When you say you’re the “idea guy,” I really hear you saying you’re the “I don’t wanna do any real work guy.”
One effective way to divide the kind of criticism you’ll get for your work is to split the feedback between that which comes from someone who has done the work you’re doing and that which comes from someone else.
It doesn’t necessarily mean one category will always be effective or helpful or productive or not. Those are further distinctions. But when I’m receiving critical feedback — on something I’ve written or presented or shared — often the first check I make is that one.
Continue reading You’re going to get criticized. Learn when to listen.
A treasured former coworker of mine posted a nice tweet, recalling that I got in her (and other reporters!) ear a lot about our beat (tech and business and blah blah blah). If you’re feeling lost, remember: Where are the people stories?
Boring interview? Lost in the details? Ask the person why they do what they do. Ask them how they ended up living where they do. Ask them what else would they do if they couldn’t do this job. Anything to get it back to the people.
A version of this essay was published as part of my monthly newsletter several weeks ago. Find other archives and join here to get updates like this first.
When I think about mistakes I’ve made, one of the common causes of my blindness that led me there is entitlement. I thought something was going to happen because I deserved it.
Not because I had done the crucial work of understanding that outcome was good for all involved. Not because I worked to get a clear agreement or that I negotiated for it by offering something someone else wanted. No.
When I’ve really gotten something wrong, when I’ve been blindsided or made a miscalculation, a lot of times I just plain thought something was coming my way because I perceived I was owed it. Maybe I thought I had put my time in or I thought I was close to the person with power. Sometimes I admire the idea of how good for me it would be if this happened, or my friends tell me how great it would be.
Continue reading Don’t wait for things you think you deserve
Just about everyone in local news is excited about reader revenue.
The term is for membership and subscription programs, and the enthusiasm is driven (as best as I can tell) by the hope that it’s an earned income stream that philanthropists and civic-minded folk approve. I’ve remained a holdout, in large part because I’ve seen the spreadsheets before.
Back at Technical.ly’s launch in 2009 and 2010, we looked seriously at membership models. And I was keen on it as a strategic bet for an ecosystem approach to local news. But the more I learned about the math, the local economics looked difficult. The math I got interested in: at $100 year from 500 members (which always looked ambitious for most small and niche media) would get you $50k a year. Trouble is that that almost certainly would need full-time support to manage, thereby costing more than it brought in.
No doubt it could work at wider scale — true town-square news orgs, like a metro newspaper, or a regional public media outfit, or the nonprofit newsrooms that filling full news deserts. But I’ve been less certain if the bench was deep of orgs that could step. Fortunately we at Technical.ly got a generous investment from the Lenfest Institute to explore more — and this month we brought together a coalition of news orgs to bring together our joint promotion. Last fall, I presented our early findings, and I got feedback I wanted to share.
Continue reading Notes on local news membership
