RALEIGH – I just finished reading the latest edition of American Journalism Review, published bimonthly by the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism. As in other recent issues of the magazine, this one devoted a substantial part of its content to reporting the effects of technological and market change on the legacy newspaper model and exploring new journalism models that may be in the offing.
As I read the AJR articles, I was struck by how far the North Carolina media market has already moved towards the future the authors envision.
For example, one piece looked at the possibility of merging newsrooms and even whole newspapers in overlapping regions. Obviously that is already a reality here in North Carolina, where the two largest newspapers – The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh – came under the same corporate ownership years ago and more recently merged a number of their units, including their Raleigh-based reporting staff.
Another article related the growth of Talking Points Memo, a left-wing blog and news outlet that has just opened a Washington bureau at a time when many traditional media outlets are shutting theirs down. TPM now operates several different brands, including TPM TV, and employs 16. Its Washington bureau is located in the same office as the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, which is pretty close ideological fit.
Here in North Carolina, opinionated blogs and websites are also investing in new reporting talent to go beyond just commenting on the news broken by traditional media outlets. You’re reading one of them right now — Carolina Journal. CJ began life in 1991 as a standard-form think tank magazine, full of lengthy opinion pieces on public policy issues and philosophical subjects. By the end of the decade, however, we had converted CJ into a monthly newspaper and redirected our resources towards investigative reporting and covering news beats that were receiving less attention from the mainstream dailies, such as higher education and state regulatory and judicial bodies.
We started with a statewide mail circulation of about 10,000 public officials, business and nonprofit executives, journalists, and community leaders. Then we added thousands of additional readers through direct mail and circulation drives, while working with like-minded alt-weeklies in Greensboro, Charlotte, and Asheville to create zoned editions of CJ reaching tens of thousands more readers as inserts in the style of Parade.
In 2001, Carolina Journal Online made its debut. Two years later came Carolina Journal Radio, a syndicated weekly newsmagazine on 20 commercial radio stations. Earlier this year, Carolina Journal TV came online, as did the Carolina Journal News Service, which provides news articles to daily and community newspapers across North Carolina.
TPM and CJ followed a similar strategy in another area: both outlets hired experienced journalists to build out their news operations. CJ’s leadership team includes Publisher Jon Ham, formerly the managing editor of the Durham Herald-Sun, and Managing Editor Rick Henderson, who previously worked in newsrooms in Denver, Las Vegas, and Riverside, California.
CJ’s expansion isn’t over yet. Sara Burrows just joined the team as an associate editor, and we’ll soon have another specialist in broadcast and online content on staff. At the moment, Carolina Journal reaches about 130,000 print readers a month, 25,000 unique online visitors a month, 30,000 radio listeners a week, and more than half a million readers of other daily and community newspapers carrying our news stories and opinion columns. And we’re just getting started.
Yet another set of American Journalism Review articles sounded a familiar note: the trend of nonprofits and foundations teaming up to produce journalism. That’s always been the CJ model. While we derive a small share of our budget from advertising, most of the bills are paid with the help of tax-deductible donations from North Carolinians who value Carolina Journal and want to see it continue and grow.
If you’re among those sustaining donors, thanks a lot. If you’re not, here’s a handy way to join the club. And if you’d like to learn more about CJ and its parent organization, the John Locke Foundation, there’s a little event coming up next week that you might want to consider.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation