by Denise

Today we were visited by now TV’s senior vice president, Cheung Chi Kong. As a guest of the U.S. Department of State, he’s touring different parts of the U.S. to observe the execution of social media with traditional media for information delivery.

It’s a bit intimidating to have an executive who manages Hong Kong’s equivalent of Turner Broadcasting System (but bigger) waltz into your office. We’ve only just gotten letterpress blocks to make a hub sign and are still waiting on our iMacs and dispatch units. Power cords just got added to the shopping list. Needless to say, it is a very humble hub right now.

It was a refreshing visit. Laurie explained how citizen journalism doesn’t replace or even necessarily competes against corporate journalism; it supplements. We discussed how learning to create quality media makes savvier news consumers. It was a pleasant reminder in the chaos of our start up of just all the reasons we really believe in citizen journalism.  Warm fuzzies all around.

But, as Chi Kong was from the corporate world, it was also a reminder of how important it is for us to make sure citizen journalism in Grand Rapids is sustainable. Since Chi Kong holds a lot of responsibility and accountability for his organization, a major concern for him (and all big media outlets right now) is the survival of his medium: cable television. As younger generations consume increasingly less on television and far more on computer and phone screens—free and on demand—how does for-profit media need to change to continue turning a buck? It is a crucial question that ties into all we value about big media, from The New York Times to CNN to your local news station.

The Rapidian cannot escape this dilemma either. For the next three years, we will be funded by the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and the Knight Foundation. In addition to a site launch, The Rapidian must also quickly figure out donation strategies for life post-Foundations. Having an Internet-based distribution, we need to navigate around the problems that plague many successful Internet startups (i.e.: Facebook, Twitter): We need to set up a “social contract” with our users to establish from the get-go that donor support is directly linked to the existence of hyperlocal journalism in Grand Rapids. Or else, like Facebook and Twitter, we will only barely cover costs each year.

Great lecture by Ellen Weiss, National Public Radio’s senior vice president for news. In discussing the success and future of NPR, she credited the age-long fund drive: As a noncommercial entity, NPR has forever asked its tuners to donate for what they can get for free.

Clay Shirky tackles thinking the unthinkable. Journalism as an ideal is not at risk of going under, but the funding model that supports it is. In describing the scramble at hand, Shirky says,

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.