Update: Bill Reader has responded both in the comments here and in a subsequent blog post (to which I responded).
It is against my nature to hold my tongue. Or my keyboard.
I have refrained from saying much publicly about the recent cutbacks at TBD because … well, because. The reasons are complicated and I still work here. I am reluctant to make much noise that might make life difficult for colleagues trying to find new jobs or for colleagues trying to continue working here. I aggregated various analyses of the business issues without comment, because I thought they were important to share.
But I do need to respond to Bill Reader’s assertion that the people here “never really did get a grasp on what community (or communities) TBD.com would be serving.” Reader, a journalism professor at Ohio University, is entitled to his opinions. But journalists who don’t bother to check their facts should be called out and Reader didn’t check his facts. I did check my facts. I asked him whether he had communicated with anyone at TBD in doing his research. His response:
To answer your question, I used standard editorial-writing procedures — reviewing reports in credible media (such as the many reports on Poynter.org, looking especially for comments attributed to TBD.com personnel such as yourself) and, of course, reviewing TBD.com itself. I do link to some of those sources; if there any factual errors in them or in my post, I of course will correct them.
Disagreements over the opinions is a different matter. We currently don’t have a means to post responses on our website, but if you send me your response I will gladly post it to the blog so long as it is not too long and adheres to basic “letter to the editor” rules — no libel, no errors fact, no personal attacks, etc.
I will give Reader some factual errors to correct from his blog post. But let’s start with the factual error in his suggestion that “standard editorial-writing procedures” don’t include checking facts with people who have first-hand knowledge. Certainly some editorial writers snipe from ivory towers, basing their opinions (and the facts they use to back them up) solely on the impressions they get from reading. But most editorial writers I have known regard thorough reporting as the basis for good opinion writing. They call or email or visit or somehow communicate with people who can verify or refute facts. Reader didn’t do this, so his opinions are based on assumptions. And assuming is never good journalism. Case in point: I didn’t assume that Reader hadn’t checked his facts; I asked him (and before I heard back from him, I asked my colleagues if he had contacted any of them).
Before I get to what Reader actually said, I should be clear about two things: I am speaking for myself here, not TBD or our company. I don’t claim that we mastered all aspects of community coverage. The company changed directions just over six months after we launched, while we were still working on improvements to our community coverage.
Now let’s examine the factual error in Reader’s premise:
One of the fatal flaws of the TBD.com model was the suggestion that “D.C.” is a community — it’s actually, of course, a sprawling city with even more sprawling suburbs, and spans two different states and “the District.” Large cities are not single communities; they are aggregates of many different communities — communities of place (e.g., “neighborhoods”), communities of identity (e.g., “ethnic groups”), and communities of shared interests (local environmentalists, local business owners, amateur-league athletes, etc. and so on). “D.C.” is a region; Columbia Heights is a community.
I am not aware that anyone involved with TBD ever suggested “that ‘D.C.’ is a community.” Yes, D.C. is a region. And we always described the metro area as a region made of multiple communities and we described TBD as a regional site with hyperlocal elements. (Even without emailing or calling someone directly involved with the site, Reader could have found that by reading CJR’s Q&A with Jim Brady or Jonathan Weber’s observations on the TBD cutback. And, if those observations conflicted with something else Reader read, that should have been a red flag to do some original reporting and ask someone working here (or Brady, whose vision Reader was faulting and who has not been bashful about answering questions).
Yes, Reader is welcome to his opinions. But he is committing the common sin (documented by Jay Rosen) of stating opinion as fact, with no links to back up your assertion that it’s fact. That’s easier than research, and even opinion writing should be based on research.
We developed “geotags” to apply to every piece of content we created or aggregated that came from a specific community, so we could provide that content just to the people interested in that community. To be featured on the home page, content needed to be of interest to the entire region, or to be heavily newsy to a substantial part of the region (D.C., Maryland or Virginia, for instance).
I actually wonder how thoroughly Reader did review our site. Because if he did, he would see on the home page a module allowing the user to choose which of the many communities in the region matters most to him or her (in the illustration below, I have chosen Herndon, where I live).
Our community engagement team (which I head, explaining why these errors in fact matter so much to me) recruited neighborhood blogs from throughout the region to fill those community feeds exactly because we understood that each community was distinct and unique. And, I should add, New Columbia Heights is one of those community blogs in the network. We heard regularly from members of our community network about how much traffic we sent their way, so people from the various communities were finding the site useful.
As our Arlington reporter, Rebecca A. Cooper, said, “As the only representative of the Neighborhoods team still hanging around here, let me speak up for our Neighborhoods coverage as evidence that we were actually doing “community journalism.”
Was our approach effective in engaging those communities? That’s a matter of opinion. I know of mistakes we made and welcome criticism of things we did that I think were smart. Did we cover all the communities effectively? No. The community engagement team was in one of the undercovered communities the day before the staff cuts, meeting with people in the community to gather their suggestions on how to cover the community better.
If you have your facts right, go ahead and criticize TBD. I won’t fire back even if I disagree. We got a lot of praise we didn’t deserve (yet) when we launched. So I’m OK with some misdirected criticism when we redirect and cut back.
But a lot of my colleagues and friends are looking for work. And I want the world to know that they did and do understand their community(ies), and that this person who says otherwise didn’t bother to check his facts. When someone is condescendingly claiming we didn’t understand our community, and making false statements in the process, it’s time for me to speak up.
Andrew Beaujon, our arts and entertainment editor, also wanted to speak up, responding to Reader’s statement that TBD would be diminished to “little more than A&E and gossip”:
I take great exception to him (and he’s not the only one) talking about arts journalism being an example of our diminished state. We’ve covered D.C.’s local arts scene very thoroughly, from a low-to-the-ground perspective that I believe is the essence of community journalism. A couple examples:
We broke the story about the National Portrait Gallery censoring an exhibition after a Christian news website criticized it. We reported the heck out of a weird deal that a local county here did with LiveNation while building a venue with taxpayer money. And we cover D.C.’s rap and go-go scenes, which go mostly unreported by local media. …
And we’ve never done gossip and won’t as long as I’m here.
Reader made other errors we could have helped him prevent (making assumptions about various head-count figures that have been reported and incorrectly saying the changes announced last week have already taken place). But those are relatively small errors (one of them repeating an error from another media report). Update: Reader has corrected these errors, for which I thank him.
The assumptions about our view of community are the whole premise of Reader’s post and since the premise is based on a faulty assumption that he didn’t bother to check out, I won’t bother to address Reader’s opinions.
Update: Bill Reader has responded both in the comments here and in a subsequent blog post (to which I responded).
Great points, Steve – it’s been pretty interesting, out here in Loudoun, watching the hyperlocal journalism experiments come and go…and the one thing that never seems to go right is that “geotagging” doesn’t quite ever capture the actual, real-life “community” boundaries – I pointed to the “interstitial” quality of exurban DC communities in this past post about the Loudoun Extra demise ( http://loudouncounty.blogspot.com/2008/06/loudoun-extra-welcome-to-neighborhood.html ), and then re-alluded to this characteristic of NOVA communities in this post ( http://loudouncounty.blogspot.com/2008/06/loudoun-extra-welcome-to-neighborhood.html ) about the developing social media-based “hub” of community information developing in Loudoun – therefore, obviously, predicting TBD’s arrival. And now TBD’s representation of Loudoun communities via zipcodes is now gone (the search under “News for You” for zipcode 20152 now only offers a sad little banner ad for a Maryland HVAC provider). So, we’re back to the local blogs/microblogs providing community, hyperlocal journalism. Glad to soldier on, here @loudoun.
LikeLike
Checking the facts before you write is a key element of good journalism, whether you are writing a story, a blog or an editorial. Doing so has saved me embarrassment on countless occasions. Case in point: I wrote a feature story Wednesday for BocaJump.com. The press release that led me to the story incorrectly identified a company involved in the event. I noticed the discrepancy in my notes when I returned from the event. Bottom line: When I returned, I started googling the company rep who had spoken at the event until I was able to find his photo on the website of the company where he actually works. Always, always check and check again!
LikeLike
Oops – second link from my post should have been ” http://loudouncounty.blogspot.com/2009/10/loudoun-county-hyperlocal-news-online.html “. Also forgot to mention the 3rd great experiment underway around here, the “patchwork” of AOL sites based on population centers (i.e. Ashburn, Chantilly, Leesburg) – these might be a little better “community” centric at the end of the day, i.e. focused not on zipcodes, but on population areas that transcend zipcodes.
LikeLike
I appreciate Steve standing up to defend his site and his staff — that’s his job. I respectfully disagree with his assertions, however. The premise of my argument was the suggestion by media watchers (not TBD.com itself) that TBD.com could be a new approach to community journalism. Nowhere in my blog post did I suggest TBD.com itself made such claims. I did link to a recent online poll titled “The Great Debate: What do we call this region”?, which I think highlighted my point, which Steve re-affirms above: TBD.com is a regional site, not a community site.
I of course have spent a lot of time reviewing TBD.com content, and of course am well aware of the ability to filter information by ZIP code and other tactics. That was what I meant when i wrote “I was intrigued by the idea.” I think TBD.com has done some cool things. But, again, providing hyperlocal news that can be sorted by ZIP code is not really community journalism.
As for Steve’s complaints about my not contacting him or TBD.com directly, I guess I’m used to that kind of sniping from PR folks, but expected more from somebody with Steve’s background. If Steve can guarantee that every blog post made to TBD.com, or to his own wordpress blog, lives up to the flawless fact-checking steps he claims to follow, maybe he would have some high ground from which to cast aspersions. But his fact-checking with me was to send one e-mail asking if I contacted anybody at TBD.com, not to express his disagreements with me in any specificity or to request corrections of factual errors or to request clarifications. Instead, he opted to kill the messenger rather than try to improve the message.
Actually, I’ve read a lot of TBD.com blog posts over the past few months that are clever rewrites of what other media have reported. In fact, here’s one from today that references a posting to the MPD’s listserv. Did the blogger contact the police directly as well? View the official incident report? Verify that the poster was, indeed, Commander Lamar D. Greene?
Finally, I recognize the brilliance, talent, and hard work of the TBD.com team in my blog post, and reaffirm that here.
LikeLike
Wow. Steve – Bill was actually editorial page editor at the Centre Daily Times when I was a cub reporter there. And he did reporting when he wrote editorials; tons of reporting. Bill Reader knows from editorial writing and reporting, and he knows community journalism – in both Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Bill – Steve’s in an incredibly awkward position here. And Steve knows as much about community journalism and how it relates to the Web as anyone I know, professionally or personally. I disagreed with some things TBD did; none of them had anything to do with the reporting and community strategy around it. Steve’s crew at TBD had more manpower invested in curating news that a robust region was already creating, and building a hub for that where none existed, than any other website around. Full stop. TBD was succeeding at its mission.
Then its mission changed.
Bill, Steve – I know if you met, you’d get on like a house on fire. I just think both of you are talking past each other, instead of to each other.
LikeLike
Chris and Bill,
Thanks for providing the background. I do hope to continue this conversation with Bill (maybe both of you?) someday over dinner or a beer. I should add here that I have a soft spot in my heart for Ohio U. One of my formative journalism experiences was the high school journalism camp in Athens the summer of — oh, never mind, let’s not carry accuracy to extremes.
While I welcome another response from Bill, I hope to make this my last word on the topic until we have that beer. But I think Bill raised some issues I should respond to:
If you’re going to stand by your story, stand by it. You wrote: “One of the fatal flaws of the TBD.com model was the suggestion that ‘D.C.’ is a community.” Our model is not what someone inaccurately suggested about us (and I don’t recall anyone suggesting that we regarded our metro area as a single community). Our model is our plan for operation, our plan for doing business, providing content, doing business. Yes, it was a flawed model (we know that and have never denied it; in announcing our name, we said our business model would be unfolding and adapting). Our company decided to change course before we got a chance to see whether that model would work. But to say that our model was a suggestion from unnamed “media watchers”? Please.
The “Great Debate” example you cite actually undercuts, not supports, your argument. We asked in the poll where someone lived, specifically testing, (as the poll showed, for whatever an unscientific poll shows) whether the term people use for our metro area varies by where they live. That is clear evidence that we understand and address the subtle differences within the larger metro community.
As for our fact-checking, yes, we expect our reporters to fact-check before publication and our aggressive correction policy is so transparent that the local media gossip blog mocks us for it. We make errors, but we expect reporters to fact-check completely and we require them to correct swiftly and strongly. No, we don’t fact-check what we aggregate, but we attribute accurately. Are you likening your blog post to aggregation?
As for my fact-checking here, you have not alleged any errors in fact. But let me review the comparison between your fact-checking and mine: You contacted no one to verify the multiple inaccurate statements in your blog post. I contacted you four hours before I published to confirm my premise (which was that you didn’t check your facts). In case you didn’t respond, I asked my colleagues if you had contacted any of them. As you know, you confirmed my suspicion that you had not verified your assumptions. I included your response in my post. An hour and a half before publishing, I told you that my post would be about the factual error in your premise. A half-hour before publishing, I sent you a draft, inviting your response, either by return email before I posted or in comments after posting, which you did. I cannot imagine how I could have been more fair to you and still respond in a timely way.
A final point in a response that has already grown too long: My job is not to defend my staff or our site. My job is community engagement. That demands understanding our community(ies). I do. And so do my colleagues.
LikeLike
Steve and Bill …
It feels like the general debate here is about questions that begin with, What …?
What community?
What content?
I tend to feel that TBD got the “What” part pretty much in the ball park, and Steve makes that point.
I tend to feel that TBD didn’t come close to getting the “How” part on the home page, which I think is Bill’s point, if imperfectly explained using “What” terms.
I regret that I never did get it, whatever it is, by looking at the home page. How could TBD’s home page have felt like a community instead of a collage?
Community is perhaps, in the end, and thus the beginning, not going to be what compels people to flock to a site, either at the desktop or out of the pocket.
I like Nick Bilton’s (book: I Live in the Future: And Here’s How it Works) belief that it is going to be the experience that in the end will compel people to flock to whatever newspapers morph into digitally.
So, whatever was/is in TBD by way of content, TBD may simply not have been designed in a way that made the experience compelling. Maybe the failure is a failure of design. I tend to think so.
The design sure feels to me like a scavenger hunt. Life moves quickly. We only have time to spend with rewarding experiences. Scavenger hunts are not in the top 100 ways people would prefer to spend a short time every day.
It may be as simple as that. The failure is a failure of design.
Nick Bilton isn’t a designer, either. And he seems to get it that the experience is key.
A personal preference here, I find the iPhone NYT app vastly more compelling because it limits what is on that small screen without limiting the breadth and depth of the content that the NYT produces. Meanwhile, http://www.nytimes.com. is back to the scavenger hunt approach to design. At least that is what it feels like to me.
And I wonder what the big-screen NYT would look like if it followed the principles of the iPhone app.
In any event, cheers to you both for keeping the conversation going. Niels Bohr is noted for having observed, An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. Newspapers have pretty well become experts with regard to newsprint. These businesses are just beginning to make the mistakes that will make them experts in the digital realm.
Bill Reader is trying to define some of the mistakes TBD has made. That enterprise is not easy, inside out outside of TBD, as the conversation illustrates.
In keeping with full disclosure here, I am a 70’s graduate of Ohio University with a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from what became the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism. The company I founded currently serves more than 1,500 community newspapers, almost all weeklies, with what might be termed subscriber relationship management tools and services. In the end, it is the people who value the experience of the newspaper enough to pay for every issue that we are looking to keep together. It is the present work of the community newspaper business to morph newsprint experiences, in which they are experts, into digital experiences that will be even more compellingly attractive and useful to their present subscribers.
And with that, let’s celebrate TBD, perhaps for reminding us that there is something much more valuable than trying to get the content right or even the community.
LikeLike
Bill,
I really like many things our designer did (and admit that design is not a strength of mine, to put it mildly). I appreciate your thoughtful response about our design and what we were trying to do. Thanks!
LikeLike
from another perspective:
if TBD had a certain level of financial footing ( ex: growing advertiser support via efforts of sales team )….
….i believe we would not have seen those cutbacks, changes and executive exits.
while i fully supported the original team and content strategy, i did have substantial concern for the sales & revenue tactics being deployed.
growing cash flow & ad revenues would have given TBD some breathing room…allowing the original TBD concept to adjust & pivot thru the early stages.
TBD is still a very solid, media strategy. from a sales guy’s perspective….i could sell it with confidence.
mel taylor
LikeLike
Thanks for your comment, Mel. The sales issues are largely unrelated to how well we did or didn’t understand our community(ies). I will let you and others address those issues.
LikeLike
Hi Steve,
I read Bill’s piece and disagree “‘ they never really did get a grasp on what community(or communities) TBD.com would be serving. “. I think TBD did a good job by joining the community ( or communities) even before launch and throughout the development process so we knew who was there and how this was working. Hyper-local news wherever in the DC area was a strength.
From the outside TBD if given time for growth will evolve to a multi-community social news site. As far as whether DC is a community or not – just check out the hashtag #dctech and see people from all over the region participating in this meetup group set up to avoid a community “fractured by location or sector”.
In the end we will travel 30 miles to join a community activity as long as we get some benefit so I would call the DC area a community. We are united if not for anything else atleast by our hope that someone will improve the Metro 😉
Thanks,
Shashi
LikeLike
[…] TBD: not everyone agrees […]
LikeLike
[…] Comments « TBD has made mistakes, but we understand our community(ies) […]
LikeLike
[…] TBD failed because it didn’t define its community well enough, but former TBDer Steve Buttry objected to that […]
LikeLike
[…] TBD: Mistakes were made, knowing community was not one of them today, 3 p.m. | The Hourly Press scans through the future-of-newstwitterverse hourly to see what people are talkingabout. For more information, check here and here. […]
LikeLike
[…] Steve Buttry responds to assertions that TBD didn’t understand communities. […]
LikeLike
[…] is advertising, it doesn’t seem like Allbritton really gave them a chance to try. There have been other speculations as well. TBD garnered world-wide attention for its novel approach and Allbritton has succeed with new […]
LikeLike
[…] to pretty much dismantle TBD just six months after we launched. However, I did respond to a faulty analysis that said we didn’t understand our communities. I also bid farewell to Mandy Jenkins, Jeff Sonderman, Daniel Victor, Lisa Rowan, Nathasha Lim, […]
LikeLike
[…] » Steve Buttry, TBD.com’s director of community engagement, acknowledged TBD’s mistakes in a blog post on Thursday. He also hit back at Ohio University Journalism Professor Bill Reader’s assertion that TBD “never really did get a grasp on what community (or communities) TBD.com would be serving.” [The Buttry Diary] […]
LikeLike
[…] TBD has made mistakes but we understand our communty(ies) […]
LikeLike