THE CATSKILLS - For over a century, newspapers have helped communities understand themselves. We report on what happened and announce what is coming. We introduce neighbors to one another and document births and deaths, businesses and governments, celebrations and conflicts.
Edition by edition, we create a record of ordinary community life that becomes more valuable as the years accumulate.
The tools available to newspapers such as ours are changing rapidly. Print now exists alongside instant access to the internet and people increasingly expect information to be immediately searchable and shareable from wherever they happen to be.
We adapt, but adaptation doesn't require abandoning the value we provided to the community in the first place.
Over the past several years, The Mountain Eagle has been experimenting with what a newspaper might become when print, digital publishing and community participation are treated not as competing products, but as parts of one connected local information system. We've built and discarded things. We've made mistakes -- so many mistakes! We've encountered boundaries that we didn't anticipate. Gradually, a set of principles has emerged from trial and error.
We call the idea behind them the Open Newspaper.
What do we mean by "open"? Open doesn't mean that everything gets published and it also doesn't mean abandoning editors, professional journalism, privacy, copyright, or editorial standards. It doesn't mean that everyone must create an account or participate digitally.
It means something much simpler.
An Open Newspaper should create as few unnecessary barriers as practical between people and useful community information. Readers should be able to read without obligational paywalls. People should be able to contribute information without needing to know someone in the newsroom. Organizations should be able to participate in maintaining their own public identities.
Print and digital publishing should connect instead of compete. Search engines and social networks should help information travel without becoming the owners of the community's memory. Technology should serve the relationships that already keep a community alive.
These are the principles currently guiding that experiment.
Value Is Relational
A newspaper's value lies in keeping the community connected. Digital technology can further bridge this gap, creating and fostering relationships between people and businesses.
Serve Where the Relationship Is Real
The internet makes it possible to claim an enormous geographic reach. That does not mean we should. Our service area should reflect communities we can meaningfully cover, understand and support.
Reduce Friction, Not Responsibility
People should be able to access newspaper services without unnecessary obstacles. Technology should make participation easier, though easier does not mean automatic. Submitted articles still receive editorial review, organizations must still authorize people acting on their behalf, and advertising remains distinct from journalism.
Preserve Appropriate Boundaries
A business or Benefactor advertising with us will not control our coverage of them. A contributor can submit information, but only we possess the authority to publish it. A social network can distribute our reporting without becoming its permanent home. These boundaries create trusting relatonships.
Represent Reality Before Participation
Our goal is to build an accurate representation of the communities we serve, including businesses and organizations that have never participated in our digital platform. Representatives may claim and maintain their existing directory profiles. The map should reflect the territory, not just the people who signed up for the map.
Identity Should Have a Purpose
Someone can buy a newspaper at a newsstand without being obligated to subscribe. They can also visit our website without becoming a member. Identity becomes necessary only when someone asks us to maintain a consistent digital relationship such as subscriber access, content submission, or organizational representation.
Create Signal, Not Noise
If everything is treated as important, eventually nothing feels important. Our responsibility is therefore not simply to publish more; it is to exercise judgment. We should identify information worth people's attention, develop and verify it where appropriate, give it a durable home, and distribute it intelligently.
Keep the Durable Record Open
When appropriate, useful information discovered through social media can become a properly published article or event on The Mountain Eagle. Extending information from social media onto our secure platform both preserves its longevity and makes it more widely accessible. Future reporting and advertisers can also connect to it. These platforms can be utilized without being the only source of information.
Preserve Provenance
Knowing where information came from is becoming increasingly important. A reporter attending a meeting, speaking with the people involved and documenting what happened, establishes a relationship between information and reality. Technology should help preserve that relationship rather than obscure it. Original reporting and clear provenance matter.
Automate Transactions So Humans Have Time for Relationships
Newspapers have limited staff resources. We would rather spend them reporting, editing, photographing, helping readers, working with businesses and talking with people in our communities than chasing routine paperwork. Transactions should therefore be simple and self-service. Automated transactions are valuable so humans have time for relationships.
Reciprocity Must Be Voluntary
The community does not owe The Mountain Eagle its support just because we believe local journalism is important. We have to create something worth supporting. Likewise, an organization does not have to advertise with us or become a Benefactor to deserve fair representation or legitimate news coverage. But no community institution can survive indefinitely without resources. We offer the relationship; you decide whether it is worth sustaining.
Pruning Is Part of Growth
Over the years, we have built features we later removed. We have explored ideas we ultimately rejected. We have maintained old processes while people adapted to new ones and eventually reached points where they could no longer continue. This can be painful, but change is part of the process. Continuing to feed something that no longer serves the mission takes resources away from things that do.
Metrics Inform Judgment; They Do Not Define Value
We measure engagement such as subscriptions and advertising because they help us discern our trajectory, but we understand that these measurements are not what define us to our community. The newspaper will never know of every connection and transaction made as a result of someone reading, but that doesn't make the outcome less real.
The Graph Serves the Community
Articles relate to authors. Events relate to organizations. Organizations relate to places. Stories relate to previous stories. People relate to institutions. Over time, these connections form a kind of community graph - a growing map of the people, places, organizations, events and history surrounding us. That graph can help readers find their way through the community.
The Gardener Is Not the Garden
The Mountain Eagle did not create the memories of the communities we serve. They were already here. The technology is not the community. The newspaper is not the community. Our responsibility is to report what happens, preserve what matters, make useful connections and help people find one another. We tend the garden. We are not the garden.
An Open Invitation
These principles are a first draft version. They're not presented as the final answer to the problems facing newspapers, communities or technology. They are what several years of building, operating, experimenting, failing, pruning and rebuilding have taught us so far. Your feedback will undoubtedly teach us more.
We are publishing them because the problems facing local journalism do not belong to The Mountain Eagle alone. Other newspapers, journalists, community organizations and readers are welcome to borrow these ideas, criticize them, adapt them and improve upon them.
An Open Newspaper does not require every newspaper to use the same software, belong to the same company or serve its community in exactly the same way. In fact, we think the opposite is healthier. Different newspapers. Different communities. Different implementations. Shared principles where they prove useful.
Local institutions do not have to be isolated. If something we learn in the Catskills helps another newspaper better serve its neighbors, they should use it. If something another community learns can help us better serve ours, we should be willing to learn from them.
That is part of what we mean by open. And if these principles change as we learn? We will adapt and still preserve the old version. After all, shared memories are too important to lose - including the memory of how our own thinking changed.
