The New York Review of Ideas » Profiles | June 2009
Wiki Journalism
Is Rachel Stern’s DIY news the future of citizen journalism?
By Lily Quateman
The 80 or so seats at The NEW, New Journalism, a panel hosted by New York’s Center for Communications on April 28th, were all filled. The walls, too, were lined both with visibly eager students toting notebooks and slightly less eager journalists looking less than thrilled to be working still at 7PM. To Sterne’s right sat Mark Egan, a Reuters bureau chief who snuck the sentence, “Reuters has experienced record profits this year” into every answer he gave. On her other side was former editor of just-shuttered Portfolio, Matt Cooper, clearly trying to avoid talk of Portfolio. And at the end of the line sat Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. And then there was Sterne, dressed in her prim uniform of button down shirt, pencil skirt and flats. She quickly won over the skeptical crowd. She told us to “imagine if, instead of just hearing about the Mumbai terrorists attacks, you were hearing about them from someone who had actually witnessed them and could then say ‘I’m angry at the politicians for this reason, here’s what it means to me,” and we did.
One audience member asked whether projects like GroundReport could report the news objectively. Sterne handily turned the question on itself. “Bias is what citizen journalists do well. It puts a more human face on things,” she replied. The audience ate it up.
Which isn’t to say that today’s media is terribly discerning about what it eats. Given the journalism world’s recent and widespread adoption of the Throwing Spaghetti At A Wall Method, media is open to lots of different schemes. While the concept of using a worldwide network of reporters to cover international news is nothing revolutionary, GroundReport’s reliance on citizens and its willingness to share the profit with them is something of a new experiment.
Like most start up ventures, GroundReport’s growth is hindered by a lack of capital. The site launched in 2007 with seed money from Sterne’s own savings and family. Her dad worked on mergers and acquisitions for IBM and Sterne’s mother was a nurse for the elderly. She credits them not only with partially funding her company, but also inspiring her to start it in the first place. “I get the civic component from my mom and the tech side from my dad,” she says, visibly struggling to draw connections from her past to her present, fingers intertwined in a web that seems to house her mostly controlled nervous tension. Sterne wants things to fit into place, not just in her venture, but also in the story of how she got to where she is. She is creating a narrative, her own legend, if you will. And the narrative she’s weaving, that of a Brooklyn-born girl inspired by the injustices of the world and her parents’ hard work—will be perfect once she can stop twisting her fingers and making it sound so forced.
Beyond Sterne’s saving and money from mom and dad, cash prizes like those GroundReport won at the German “Open Source Meets Business” conference, content partnerships and advertising have helped defray GroundReport’s costs. The site is paying for itself, something few global startups can claim. But the money being generated is only enough to continue and subsist, not grow. “The logo is probably the only thing I’m happy about right now,” she says of the amateurish appearance of the site. But until GroundReport sees an infusion of capital, the visual mock up of a more professional looking site will remain nothing more than a mock up.
The first time I asked Sterne about the possibility of using venture capital money to expand, she preached about that sort of money making it difficult to “stick to your mission.” After she made it on the Business Week top entrepreneurs list a few weeks back and saw some interest from investors, her story changed somewhat. Now, she is “potentially interested.” But her profit sharing business model is not as interesting as others for venture capitalists looking to make big money. Sites that can charge for specialized, professional content are more enticing. And because GroundReport is for profit, it does not have the donation-drawing potential of an even-more-earnest not for profit, all for the people project.
The site joins the ranks of comparable start ups like Global Post, ProPublica, and The Huffington Post. Global Post functions like a stripped down, low cost version of old school wire services translated onto the Web. A combination of advertising, syndication and subscription to their premier content service, Passport, sustain the project. ProPublica, is giving the non-profit, foundation model a go, funded by the likes of The Macarthur Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies. And the HuffPost is essentially an aggregator hell bent on e-domination with about 6.5 million unique visitors a month.
The HuffPost and Ground Report—an aggregator and a creator of news—are not so much competitors as they are natural partners. In fact, GroundReport content has been featured on the HuffPost in the past. Some potential competition could arise when the HuffPost begins its investigative reporting initiative in the coming months. The site has pledged $1.75 million to the project though they have yet to release many specific details. That said, the HuffPost is like an insatiable beast where content is concerned and they’d sooner continue snacking on GroundReport content than try to swallow the company whole.