How the Sausage Gets Stuffed

This blog is kind of a strange thing. It's not a charity and it's not political. In fact, it's a business. But I believe it serves a very important function in our community. What it is trying to do is create a space in the "body politic" where people can learn important, but rarely expressed facts about our society. Moreover, the editorial stance that I have taken on fits into the old model idea that the job of media is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".

This stand is in direct competition to two other models that are pretty much dominant nowadays. One of them could be characterized as "be totally objective to the point of refusing to take a stance on anything". Elizabeth May mentioned this in her announcement of her resignation as leader of the Green Party:

Photo from official GPC website.

I hold the media to account for failure to deal with the science in the course of this campaign. For continuing to talk about climate change as if people understood it. It's as if we were having a debate about the economy where no one in the room understood inflation.  

Elizabeth May, as quoted by Canadaland Short Cuts

                                  

This is a fundamentally ridiculous editorial stance to take, as the science has been proved, the results are already in front of our eyes in the form of floods and wild fires, and, the threat is objectively more dire than anything else that has faced human civilization. Yet, it is arguably the way most of the legacy media---including the CBC---still follows the story. (If you want to see how a large media organization that does take the climate emergency seriously would cover the file, I'd suggest taking a look at the National Observer.) 

The other model, of course, is the one taken by propaganda outlets that are actively trying to deceive readers as a way of supporting increasingly reactionary conservative political ideologies.

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I suspect that most readers don't have a clue about how much work goes into creating my weekly editorials plus the "deep digs" that I've been putting out at the rate of about one a month. 

The thing to understand is that in order to write anything worth reading, a journalist has to be somewhat obsessive. In my case that means that I pretty much spend all day thinking about the stories that I'm writing.

Moreover, it means that I have to devote a huge amount of time exposing myself to many different things in order to "develop" stories. Most days this starts when I wake up, as I usually start reading news stories and listening to podcasts on my cell phone while still in bed. This continues after I get up with listening to podcasts while cooking breakfast. I generally listen to the Rachel Maddow Show, the Ezra Klein Show, Today Explained, Front Burner, bits of The Current, Guelph Politico, Open Sources Radio, and, The Weeds---as well as others that don't come out on a regular basis.  I usually also spend an hour or so watching the previous night's CBC national news on YouTube (this has the advantage of allowing me to fast-forward through bits of "fluff" and avoid most of the commercials). In addition, I try to read five different news sources every day: The National Observer, The Toronto Star, Guelph Today, The Guelph Mercury/Tribune, and, Adam Donaldson's Guelph Politico.

The value of this insane amount of news exposure is that it feeds my conveyor belt of ideas that I need to keep running in order to produce enough content to build a readership.

In addition I spend a lot of time going to events in order to "develop" community stories. This includes attending most of the Thursday "Breezy Breakfasts" organized by James Gordon and Phil Ault, as well as special events like James Gordon's Climate Emergency Show, the Green New Deal meetings, the Guelph screening of Election Day in Canada, Emerge Guelph's Talk as if Climate Change Mattered event, and so on. I find these events tremendously useful as they introduce me to people that I can interview at a later date so I can do my "deep dig" stories. 

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This raises the next issue. When I do interview someone, I have a process where I record them. If they don't want to "be the story", I use this information to go do future research. Unlike many mainstream reporters, I am generally not content to simply come up with a quote, attribute it to someone, and, then write the story. I try to go the one step further and double check what they are saying to see if it is actually true or not. Moreover, I also try to expand upon a statement to explain in greater detail---if necessary---so the reader can understand the context. 

If someone is a big part of the story---like a politician or local community leader---I try to create transcripts. Most reporters are increasingly content to just edit the sound file and put it up as a podcast. It is my opinion, however, that there is something about the written word that is superior to the spoken. One key part of this is the fact that if someone says something that is obscure or complex, if you are just hearing it, you generally don't have the option of going back to carefully parse out what they just said. In contrast, if you are reading a statement, the person transcribing the interview will have forced themselves to make sure that they understand what was said. Moreover, the reader is able to reread any sentence, or, stop and do a Google search to explain a new word or concept that they don't understand. This dramatically improves comprehension. 

Transcribing interviews is tremendously slow and tedious. A one hour interview can take weeks to transcribe into notes through an hour or two of work every day. To understand this point, consider that only about 40 seconds of an interview creates a page of writing in my reporter's news pads.  (Incidentally, I use news pads for the same reason any other journalist does, to create a permanent record that could protect me if I am ever sued for libel.)  

When I am actually writing a story I try to check everything I write to find out if I'm mistaken or not. In this particular Op Ed I had a specific example from the mainstream media of a national newspaper spouting anti-climate change propaganda. I spent a fair amount of time on the Web looking for confirmation and ended up with an article from the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the subject. It was quite long and went into some very specific scientific detail. After I'd invested the half hour or so in reading it, I came to the conclusion that the situation was a bit more ambiguous than I thought, so I removed the sentence because I thought it wouldn't be fair to leave it in. 

Even if I do keep an idea in the article, I still often have to put a lot of effort into making sure that it is correct. 

For example, in this particular Op Ed, it took me about a couple hours to come up with the quote from Elizabeth May. First I had to listen to the podcast from Canadaland. That gave the knowledge that it was actually there. Then I spend about a half hour rooting around on line to see if I could find the original source for the clip used by Jesse Brown. (Best practice involves using the original source if possible---this protects people from being quoted out of context.) I wasn't able to find it, and I tend to trust Canadaland anyway, so I gave up and decided to find it on the podcast. This took some time futzing around with the streaming feed until I found it. Then I had to transcribe her words. That took another 15 minutes or so. Then it was time to dig up a photo of Elizabeth May on line, which was easy as politicians are usually happy to let you use pictures from their websites. 

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I suspect that some readers are now saying to themselves "Why in God's name would anyone put so much effort into writing something that only a small number of people read?"

When I started this project I had two ideas in mind.

First, when the Guelph Mercury finally shut down after decades of agonizing decline it occurred to me that an opportunity presented itself to come up with a new model of creating local news. 

Secondly, I was aware that one of the few parts of the news industry that was actually thriving were specialist background journals that were aimed at experts in particular fields. These set out to inform Executive Officers about specific political, economic, scientific, etc, stories that are critical to the decisions they make as part of their jobs. These publications generally have very low circulation, charge very high fees, and, are behind very zealously-protected paywalls. My thought was "what if someone created a similar type of publication for the citizens of a community?" 

Finally, I knew that my years of slaving away at my "day job" were finally coming to an end. In addition, after years of work in Green politics and various activist projects, it occurred to me that I was pretty much free of all other entanglements. Moreover, this activity---plus my various literary projects over my life---gave me a pretty good background that I could use to build up this experiment. 

It would like to have a large number of paid subscribers plus a much larger pool of readers. But I know that I am already having a positive impact on the community. One example comes from a fellow who is relatively high up on the Wellington Water Watchers who told me that a significant fraction of people concerned about their work have been reading up my article about gravel pits and the DoLime Quarry. If memory serves, he said people say it is the best introduction they've found to the subject.

I've also gotten a lot of positive feedback from Guelph city staff. As one person I met at a party told me "I'm a head of a department and I like to read the blog because I learn stuff from it that I didn't know." These are people in a position to use the information I dig up to do a better job for the city. I can't think of a better audience. 

One last point. This isn't about me doing this. I'm trying to do a "proof of concept" for a new and better type of journalism in this city. This is why I make the effort to get financial support instead of just doing this as a "labour of love". I do have financial costs---both personal and with regard to the blog. But it's also important that I show that I can create a business that could potentially become a paid job. I'm not going to be able to do this for that many more years---I am getting old and I already have arthritis that causes some pain while writing these articles. The reason why no young people are doing this sort of journalism isn't because it is inherently impossible to make a living doing this, it's because people have become socialized to expect their news for "free". I'm trying to educate an entire community in the necessity of paying for real news.

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This gets me to the cost of putting out this blog. I mentioned that I have have five different news sources I try to read every day. I subscribe to two on-line news sources plus two podcasts. Together these add up to considerable amounts of money:

• The Toronto Star, $203.40/year
• The National Observer, $158.20/year
• Guelph Politico, $120/year
• Canadaland, $120/year

A little over $600 is nothing for me to sniff at, especially as my income dropped by about 40% in May when I retired. Moreover, there are other expenses. I don't get many "freebies" because most groups and individuals refuse to see me as a "legitimate" journalist. That means if I review a new book, go to an event, etc, I'm usually expected to pay the full cost instead of getting a press pass or review copy. 

A while back a friend asked me how much I make off paid subscriptions in a month. He was surprised when I told him that it only came to about $89 from Patreon and $7.50 from PayPal, or $96.50/month.  

Don't get me wrong, this is pretty good for the indie media scene. It takes years to build up a brand, and I've only been doing this for about two and a half years. But it's far from enough support to entice a young person into taking over the business. That's why I keep asking people to support the blog, either through subscriptions or by buying advertising. (I have yet to get a single advertiser.) 

But still, the money helps. Recently I decided that I need to start using the telephone, so I'm investing in a VOIP land line ($10/month) and an on-line recording device so I can do phone interviews. This might not seem like a lot, but it comes down to more than 10% of my gross income---. In addition, there are other costs that any small business incurs: business cards, stationary, reporter's pads, computer equipment, etc.

Moreover, I think it's time to think about advertising outside of social media, which seems to be somewhat "tapped out". (Last month I got bounced from the Guelph sub-Reddit---for reasons none of the moderators wanted to explain to me.) 

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Well, there it is. I've laid out how much time and money I spend on putting this blog together. Consider this something of a "funding appeal" like you regularly get from TVO or the United Way. If you would like to help me, you can subscribe through Patreon or PayPal---even as little as a dollar a month really helps. But even if you can't afford that (I know a lot of you give substantive amounts of money to worthwhile charities), consider sharing my blog with your friends on social media---word of mouth is key to finding new subscribers.

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!