Susan Mernit's Blog

Bay Citizen may merge with California Watch, CIR

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:31:44 -0800

I started hearing these rumors three weeks ago, and then, today, the Bay Citizen scooped itself, posting that Phil Bronstein would likely come in as CEO for the troubled Bay Citizen--and help it merge with California Watch and The Center for Investigative Reporting (disclosure: I consulted for CIR for a year).
This is one of those moves that is not only fiscally sound (merging two organizations each having annual budgets of over $3.4MM would surely result in economies of scale), it's editorially wise, since The Bay Citizen's problems all along have had to do with finding a unique voice and making good use of all their resources and people, and California Watch's issues have been not around a voice or content (they have some terrific editors), but around distribution.
Further, the story goes that folks like Bronstein and CIR's director, Robert Rosenthal, were instrumental in helping Warren Hellman shape his thinking before The Bay Citizen was launched, and that in fact, there was some surprise that Hellman formed the organization without CIR.
There's also the important cash flow fact, which is that while CIR has done a brilliant job raising money from both national and local foundations to support California Watch, some of its largest funders are now pulling back, both because o f a change in direction and because it is rare for a foundation to supply large funding for more than 3 years.
One interesting question is--what would the merge look like? With two organizations that both have reporting teams of more than 13 people each, a "reduction in force" would seem inevitable, even as efficiencies of scale would be valued.
I'd love to see this happen--there are some terrific people at both organizations--and the Bay area could use a broadly focused digital news voice that had the funds to do deep-dive investigative reporting--and partner with organizations like Oakland Local for more local coverage.

Tearing through work

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:31:25 -0800

One of the best ways to approach a big project is to just start working on it. I've done a huge chunk of work for a client on metric for hyperlocal news sites and after getting the initial work done, put it aside for six weeks. Next week, I am giving a webinar on the materials. I realized I was totally stressed about this paper and preso and that the only thing to do was spend a chunk of today working on it so my unreal fears could be replaced with real fears (or not).

After 5 hours, I've rewritten the big, clunky paper into something still long (25 pages) but very readable, planned out the webinar, and feel able to write the preso and spend no more than 2-3 hours on it. (This is a huge relief). I also realized what the follow up project should be--and have plans to do a one-sheet on value and impact for my idea.

What else did I do today?
Work on Oakland Local
Write proposals for a panel and a workshop for Netroots Nation
File 2 FOIA requests
Play with the dog
Get photographed with my fabulous friends
Go out to dinner at Ninna with same friends
Hit the local hot tubbery with said friends
Play with the dog
Come home and talk about how to change the world with my super great housemate
Hit the interwebs

It was a really productive day, and getting my big rock done makes me feel very calm.

The Bay Citizen: $6.2MM budget and no leaders?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:17:36 -0800

In about ten days,editor Steve Fainru is leaving the Bay Citizen, just around the same time their CEO, Lisa Frazier, is departing. Has there ever been an organization whose benefactor--the recently deceased Warren Hellman--made sure there was millions in the bank--but whose entire leadership team has departed? (Original EIC Jon Weber left several months ago).

Rumor has it that the Bay Citizen's traffic numbers are not strong, and that the company is so focused on their deal with the New York Times that it's taken attention off building traffic to their web site. But as an organization--with a union, no less--that has more writers than just about any California non-profit (except for maybe California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting)--the whole situation is just plain strange.

(And of course, despite all the money raised, Hellman's death may have left large sources of future funding in limbo).

So, whither Bay Citizen? Are more consultants in the wings to take over or plan next steps?
This is such an unusual situation--it would be interesting to know.

Shit Silicon Valley Says (Video): Priceless

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:50:48 -0800

OMFG, this is so funny—and so true. Well done, folks! Tom Conrad/Kaie Imbach, more, more!

Business Insider on Jim Bankoff, AOL & Vox Media, great piece

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:25:49 -0800

I had a blast reading The Raid on AOL: How Vox Pillaged Engadget And Founded An Empire
by Kevin Lincoln. As a former AOLer who worked closely with Jim Bankoff back in the day, this account rings true on so many levels.

But I was also thrilled to learn that SB Nation, Bankoff's company, has Oakland, CA roots--turns out SB Nation was a side project started by Markos of Daily Kos and his friend Tyler Bleszinski. Lincoln writes, looking back to the 2003-2005 era:

"Unhappy with how his favorite team, the Oakland A's, was being covered - and inspired by the cerebral sabermetrics of A's manager Billy Beane, as chronicled in Michael Lewis' book "Moneyball" - Bleszinski decided to start Athletics Nation. He corrected what he saw as the mistakes of other baseball writers by doing away with the veil of objectivity, which he believes is a myth in sports media coverage. He proudly displayed his pro-A's bias and covered the team obsessively, 24/7, and particularly in the offseason."

And from that..magic--and a growing company that's launching all sorts of big media-and a terrific, well-researched piece on AOL, Vox and how things came to be,

Community media--or big company? The Oakland Tribune cease and desist letter

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:58:23 -0800

The fine and often cloudy line between big corporate media and grassroots community media came into sharp focus this week in Oakland, when the Bay Area News Group, now managed by Digital First and promising a new focus on all things community, issued a cease and desist letter to The Occupied Oakland Tribune, a volunteer effort from the Occupy Oakland movement. I covered this story for my independent Oakland news non-profit, Oakland Local--and though it just said so much about where big media is today. (Alert: opinions follow).

Corporations need to protect their trademarks. Without a creative commons license, legal counsel at BANG surely felt they had to protect their trademark or risk diluting it. Ergo, C&d to the offenders, even if it's a grassroots, volunteer organization.

One group doesn't know what the other group is doing. Who hasn't worked for a big company at some point where the interests of one department slap right up against the interests of another? Surely no one bothered to tell Digital First/ANG honchos John Paton, Jim Brady or Steve Buttry about this letter, and maybe not BANG's Randy Keith, either.

Is community media talk--or walk? Can big newspapers stop seeing the community--and local media like Oakland Local or even OOT--as their competition and their enemies--and actually learn how to support independent voices? Let's say the *new* Trib is trying-or likes to say its trying--and then ask how far that perspective goes and how many legal,financial and policy decisions it informs--and what's just spin.

Unfortunately, if I worked at BANG in legal, I'd send that letter as well. But if if worked at BANG in management, or at Digital First, I'd damn well want to make sure I heard--before it happened---about company plans that reached out in and affected grassroots community--so I wouldn't be in the embarassing position--as one BANG staffer called it--of hosting talks with Occupy folks with one group--and sending them cease and desist letters from another in the same company.

And I'd also tell my reporters to attribute their stories--like this one from the Trib, that doesn't even mention Oakland Local breaking this story DAYS before they ran theirs. DOH!!

Steve Spiker is so right re local government and innovate--or stagnate

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:44:52 -0800

My friend Steve Spiker was at a Code for America announcement in San Francisco today that triggered some strong feelings on his part. And he's right on. Not only is Oakland--our town--right across the bridge from SF, we have tons of the CFA people living here. And yet...we're not, as a city, doing half of what SF is to support open data, live apps, etc.

Some of Steve's points that resonated with me:
"Many of our tech problems have been solved in other cities and all we need to to is pick from existing open sourced applications and implement them in our town."
And:

From my work here are a few quick areas that I've seen solutions for either out of CfA or in the Civic Commons:

Contracting processes: currently a small business contract with the city for perhaps a few thousand dollars requires the business to complete approximately 12 different documents, from word docs to locked PDFs, so they must print them all and fill them out by hand, and then submit copies. I can only imagine the city process for recording and managing these various forms when they are received. Take a look at the SmartPDF work in SF for a powerful solution, or just make the effort to combine all these forms into a single, fill-able PDF at the very least, and one day perhaps implement web based forms?
Adopt an Open311 system for calls for service. This platform, developed in SF and DC is an open source 311 system that has open connectors and a new public dashboard feature developed by CFA. Very powerful and no proprietary software required.
Work with the county to build a unified property addressing system.
Implement Classtalk.org across the OUSD and help our teachers keep in touch with their students via SMS - perfect for a community with low internet access at home!
Implement ChangeByUs, a great new tool for community engagement and collaboration.
Implement an OpenData policy and work with our tech community to build an OpenData portal for our city. Free up valuable city data to encourage innovation, engagement and new startups! We're doing this anyway, but it should be supported by our city!

Steve, you are so right.

QOTD: May on "social justice technologist"

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:27:56 -0800

"What is the personal genesis of self-empowerment? Are there invariable, atomic elements common among these experiences? If so, what is the most effective way to infuse the largest number of people with these positive experiences in a way that successfully engenders autonomous power for each given individual? "
May May, maybemaimed.com, http://bit.ly/vPBkDP

Great post by May on his journey, asking some questions I want to think about as well:

Doing more with less: "It's all just stuff I don't need, distractions I can't afford, things I hardly used. The only reason I have them is because I was afraid of not having them, because I was made to believe I was supposed to have an apartment, with stuff, purchased using money from a job I don't like to make me feel better about having that job I never really even fucking wanted. And now, I'm not so afraid of that anymore."

Doing work that matters: "What is my career when I have achieved, for me, an unprecedented level of recognition after 8 long years of being in the workforce? What is my contribution to my own future, and to people like me who are still young children today?"

We make our own home inside us--or we don't: "Maybe I never had a home. Or maybe I ought not have defined "home" so narrowly."

Blogging is back--so what does that mean?

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:00:45 -0800

I'm blogging again.
Or, I'm resolving to blog again, but actually meaning to do it.
Or, I'm just blogging again, dammnit.

Back in 2002/2003, when I started to blog, it was the coolest thing possible.
Two years ago, I was in the throes of a start-up (Oakland Local), and blogging seemed redundant with all the Twitter, Facebook, social media energy.

Here we are at 2012, and even with Tumblr (susanmernit.tumblr.com), Pinterest (just checking it out) and Google Plus (profile here), there are still things I want to say that the blog seems the right format for. So here, we go.

Why blog?

Social media is a bit like circling the drain unless you have some real content assets to share--or you like to chatter (and the short form is an art.)
Tumblr is a magnificent reclipping and image/photo/video sharing service, among other things, but it doesn't feel like blog post land to me (tho if I didn't have a blog, I'd definitely have a tumblr first)
Pinterest is ladies over 40 who like to do something tumblr-esque inside a walled garden. It's the new Vox. m'thinks. (Cool, but not my focus.)

Who else is experiencing a revival of interest in blogging? Anyone getting their words back?

NYE resolutions, part 1 (the personal ones)

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:36:02 -0800

It's almost 4 PM on December 31st and I'm already mentally using the new year on the checks I have to write. Last year was the first year I made resolutions I actually kept, and the two I made really did improve my life (one was sleep an hour more every day, and it seems to have pushed me from 6 to 7 hours of sleep on average each night, which is what I really need; the other was to go to the gym and do aerobics/a weight circuit and stretching 3X a week, and I have pretty much done that as well).
So, this year, I want to make more resolutions, and keep them all, so I am going to list them here so friends and family can check in and see if I am doing what I said I was going to do. Here's a working list of personal resolves:

Get a full baseline medical check up. (I HATE going to the doctor.)
See my son once a month if possible, but not less often than every 6 weeks (because he is the most interesting person ever and I love him).
More time for friends on a weekly basis (hear that, everyone--PLEASE invite me to do stuff and see you!)
LOSE 30 pounds. (Ouch! I have I would do this so many times that if I'd done it before, I would have disappeared by now, but I am going to put some strong focus and intention on doing this in a consistent and healthy way in 2012.)
Be active every day. What can I add to that 3X a week gym routine that keeps me sweating and moving? and having fun?

I will post some work and career-related resolutions as well; going to sit with these for now.

Holiday breakfast 2011

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:10:36 -0800

So tomorrow morning is the big Christmas breakfast. We like to cook, so we're cooking.
Menu:

Home made three-fruit marmalade (bright and fresh)
Home made lemon oxford cut marmalade (dark and more tart)
Cranberry-Hazelnut quick bread
Banana bread with pecans and dried cranberries
Leek and bacon quiche
Leek quiche with mushrooms (for those vegetarians)
Citrus fruit salad (love those fruits in the winter)
Berry-melon fruit salad (what my partner likes)
Coffee
Tea
Sparkling bubbly drinks for those who want them
Home made ginger ale (made ginger simple syrup last week)
Christmas cookies (friends will provide

And then there will be:

Talk
Walk
Playing with dog
Opening presents
Friends, family, fun

Photos to come

Knowing when to let go

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:37:12 -0800

Learning from failure and not giving up two early are traits that lead to success, in my experience. The mistakes I made with my first start up lead to the resolve to not make those mistakes again, and to a very viral response to Oakland Local. Hanging in there has kept me at making Oakland Local work financially even when I've gotten totally fed up and discouraged.

But I question whether persistence is always a good trait. I think my persistence has led me to hang on too long in other areas where a more sane person would have packed it in. I've stayed in personal relationships, friendships, and professional organizations after it really made sense to hang on, not always for the better.

I'm thinking ahead to 2012, and knowing I need to ask myself questions about how much I am willing to change and move on in 2012. I think I am at one of those points again where I need to get out of my comfort zone and change some established behaviors around food, exercises and relationships--those things that truly, end up reflecting what the priorities really are, versus what I say they are.

I know this is all deliberately a bit obscure, but I can feel myself starting to question some things.

What went viral in my life in 2011

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:42:47 -0800

Okay, it's that moment when the last breath of the year hurrumphs and lumbers forward before it's time to change the dates on the checks (and everything else). This is usually the moment when I start looking forward, but I am going to look back and ask "What tools and resources went viral for me in 2011?"

1. Storify
I love Storify. The new design is confusing, accessing current data from the Twitter and Facebook APIs is pretty chancy, but the basic capability to put a narrative together using social media content , hashtags and text is just superb. I covered everything from a teen group competing on a national TV show to Occupy Oakland using Storify.

2. Gmail filters and folders and labels
After my 300+ emails a day threatened to drive me insane, I did some serious research abut managing the inbox and took advice from Lifehacker. Strategies?

Create filters for everything and everything not essential straight to the folder to refer to later.
Use the labels "Action Needed," "File me" and, in my case, "Story possibility" and "Ad prospect" to sort mail.
Delete!

3. Music: Renting, not buying

I started paying for two music apps in 2011. I'd started with Pandora, which I love, in 2009; I'm now also paying for Spotify. The Pandora investment led me to British composer and pianist Helen Long, whom I adore and play all the time when I work; the Spotify investment allowed me to check out and play selections from several of the collections that the NY Times' Jim Fusilli named as top albums (for want of a better word). I'd never heard Paul Simons' "So Beautiful or So What" before. Wow.

4. Going to the gym 3 times a week and doing my circuit

I've been going to the gym for more than 2 years, but this is the year I've somehow internalized that I need to go regularly--and do aerobics and lift weights (and stretch). The consistency is hard-won, but hopefully not too fragile.

5. Kindle/e books

Amy Gahran got me to try her old Kindle and I got hooked. I've now bought two Kindles as gifts for family members (and linked them to my account) and downloaded more than 83 sample chapters and 38 books to my device (Some of the books are classics from Gutenberg). My rule is the Kindle is for travelling and actual books are for home, but I'm still sampling chapters like crazy on the Kindle, even at home. And it's great.

6. Kale & Mustard Greens

We didn't become vegan, and we didn't quite go paleo, but we did embrace the dark green veggie thing, big time. I have passed through the making kale crisps with curry in the oven phase (I think), and am more in the sauteed greens at many meals a day stage.

7. Excel

My partner is a math wiz who dreams in Excel; I have been fighting a math block that kicked in as a teen all my life. It's all A's doing that I can do do things like forecast prospective value, all on my own, through the wonders of Excel.

8. Netflix for TV/Cable series

Gave up TV in 2008, got Netflix in 2010. 2011 was when I discovered TV series had changed. In the past year, I have very much enjoyed making my way through:

Dexter
Saving Grace
Drop Dead Diva (gave up on it, kinda)
The L Word
Breaking Bad

I tried True Blood and Glee, but they didn't stick.

9.Family ties

I'm waaay too busy, with a job and a startup (okay, two jobs), but that makes maintaining close ties critical. My partner, my son, my siblings, my close friends...I made more effort this year to hold onto these connections, not that I always succeed as well as I might have. (And I won't mention the great friends I need to see MORE.)

10. Planning events

I've been planning events most of my life, but really got in the groove this summer with Code for Oakland and the InOak lunch series. Now planning lots more for 2012. Fun--and a play to your strengths kind of thing for me.

What I learned at newsfoo #2011

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:12:43 -0800

What happens when you put 150 talented, passionate people in a set of rooms for 2.5 days and help them connect?

If you're the Google, O'Reilly, Knight Foundation team that planned the second newsfoo, you're just part of the crowd, staying up late playing Werewolf and talking talking talking in-between product demos. Part pajama party, part geek fest, part insider mingle sprint, my first newsfoo--and the second newsfoo organized by O'Reilly with the help of geekster media maven Jennifer 8 Lee, was amazing.

Parts of the event were definitely friendDA, but I'd like to share some of the flavor of the weekend, so if you're lucky enough to be invited (only 40% make will make it back for a second confab) you know you have to clear your scheduler and go.

When you're an obsessive, you never run out of things o discuss, particularly if everyone else is as obsessed as you are
Newsfoo made me remember that some people work at the intersection of tech/civic engagment/media and community because it's their job, but I don't think many of those people were at the meeting. Instead, I think the group was a whole lot of people like me, people who are so obsessed with solving particular sets of problems or answering specific questions that they would work on these things whether they made money from it or not. In other words, people who were so into their work they found ways to get paid for it because it was something they loved to do.

Newsfoo is a frieNDA kind of place, so I'm not going deep dive into who said what and where, but here's some info:

Topics/fields of newsfoo folks, in no particular order:

news apps
long form investigative journalism
community web-based radio
hyperlocal media, local mobile, local apps, local wikis
data visualization tools & models
scraping tools
e-pubs
organization change & the future of news
crowd-sourcing
research: organizational development, behavior of crowds, weighting algorithms
personalization
journalism (every flavor)
Journalism education and professional development
Internet freedom, journalists' rights
CMS (and beyond the CMS)
data research, metrics
new ad models and tools/platforms
video, video documenter, future of video
Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street Journal
civic engagement

and then some.... so many interesting people and projects it was obvious I was never going to meet or talk to everyone I might.

Unconference formats work, but hallway con is always tasty
So our newsfoo was a series of sessions on topics we self-organized and a lightening fast Ignite series of talks with 17 brave souls on Saturday night (before those games of Werewolf kicked in).

Some of the session highlights for me:

Danny O'Brien talking journalism and rights
Our group panel on local with See Click Fix and Localwiki
Baratunde Thurston on satire and snark and who to pay attention to right now in satire

Hallway con highlights

Connecting with Sasha Constanza-Cohen VozMob around share mission, shared Drupal back end and share obsession with feature phones and mobile publishing and interactivity tools (especially for undeserved communities.)
Talking Google + with the Google content team lead
Getting a deep dive into my friend Dan Pacheo's excellent Book Brewer, a platform to do pub that I am going to jump into right now.
Occupy Wall Street: Michael Levitin is one of the editors of this NYC-based, moving to national Occupy site that is printing newspapers (remember them?) as a means to get the word out.
Catching up with Jody Brannon, Kim Bui, David Cohn, Maureen Jennings, Robert Rosenthal, Scot Rosenberg, Jay Rosen, Gabe Rivera, Dan Gillmore, Andrew Pergam, Jose Zamora, Brad Flora, and other smart folks I don't talk to enough.
Talking with folks newer to me like the wonderful and smart Javaun Moradi, Lorrie LeJeune, Cyndi Stivers (someone I have always admired, since the days of her editorship of Time Out NYC), Karen Templer, Dan Victor, Ellen Weiss, John Barth, Andrew Fitzgerald and Karen Wickre.
Finding out Jose Antonio Vargas knows and liked Oakland Local made me so happy, I admire him.

Ignite #newsfoo
http://digiphile.tumblr.com/

The level of polish, creativity, wisdom and--thank god--humor in these 17 presos would take more than Ignite's 5 minutes to express, but if they see the light of day, check them out.

So what did I learn from all these people that is going to affect my next 6-12 months? What were the high-level takeaways:

E-pubs: Get started now
Ad models: Some new tools have amazing promise, but everyone's still in search of a viable business model.
Data visualization: As the tools grow, still some frustration on how to make data viz even more accessible is out there--how can we make this growing discipline more accessible?
Mobile and geo-location are becoming seamless in apps
Cultural change: Was there a journalist or developer from a big media company in attendance who didn't reference the re sets that big media is going through (and needs to go through faster).
O'Reilly: Great company, you get a feeling why people who work here have stayed 10+ years
Fun: Games, drinks, talk--when the tribe gathers it is hella fun, so enjoy.

Thinking Newsfoo: Occupied by Oakland

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:37:51 -0800

Going to Newsfoo in Phoenix in a matter of days and thinking about doing a talk. Some of the options I'm considering (comments welcomed):

Occupied by Occupy: The Occupy Oakland movement surrounded Oakland Local like a rush of hot lava. How did we manage our coverage to provide unique value in a media storm--and make it happen on a super-limited budget? In some ways the essence of OL shone through for Occupy Oakland and for a month, it ruled.

$56,000 edit budget, 308,000 unique visitors: how? Oakland Local has a unique blend of reported news, community voices and non-profit partner content. And our audience is 46% under 35--not the traditional newsies. What do we do--and how do we d it (howling at the moon).

Very excited to be part of a set of discussions about the future of news & community media, transparency, the semantic web, app frameworks, mobile, CMSs and what they are evolving into, digital divide and all the other related topics that make my brain--and my heart-go zing zing zing.