{"id":11066,"date":"2016-03-20T08:05:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T14:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=11066"},"modified":"2016-03-20T08:05:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T14:05:47","slug":"prairie-lights-3-cheers-for-states-growing-online-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/03\/prairie-lights-3-cheers-for-states-growing-online-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: 3 cheers for state’s growing online news"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MFP\"<\/a>

The Montana Free Press is one of a handful of new online journalism ventures in Montana.<\/p><\/div>\n

Talking to Martin Kidston last week, I almost felt as though I was interviewing myself<\/a> again.<\/p>\n

The former Missoulian reporter quit his job at the end of December and launched an online newspaper, Missoula Current<\/a>, in early January.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just decided I didn\u2019t want to work for a corporate paper,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a broken template, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ed\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n

The Missoulian, like the Billings Gazette, is owned by Lee Enterprises<\/a>, a newspaper chain based in Iowa. Kidston thought the Missoulian \u201cwas becoming more of an advertising product than a news product.\u201d At the same time, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Lee, hundreds of millions of dollars in debt<\/a> and floundering in a new media world, was not prepared to reward good, hard work.<\/p>\n

Missoula Current, like Last Best News (which launched Feb. 1, 2014), is a for-profit business. Kidston has been concentrating almost exclusively on editorial content so far, but he has begun selling some ads and he hopes to be able to make a living as an online reporter, and maybe even take on a partner or two someday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are exciting times,\u201d he said. \u201cWith technology, we can do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Helena, John Adams also fled from corporate journalism, in his case the Great Falls Tribune, owned by Gannett<\/a>, the newspaper chain that publishes USA Today.<\/p>\n

Adams was the Tribune\u2019s capital bureau reporter in Helena until the Trib announced it was restructuring the newsroom and invited Adams to apply for a new position, that of \u201cstate capital columnist.\u201d After stewing on it for a while, Adams called his editor \u201cin a fit of rage\u201d and said he wouldn\u2019t be applying for a new job.<\/p>\n

He was laid off as of March 1, 2015. He had some money saved up and a friend\u2019s cabin to live in for a while, so he took some time off to figure out what he was going to do. All he knew at that point (another d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu for me) was that he wanted to continue working as a reporter and wanted to stay in Montana.<\/p>\n

After doing some freelancing and consulting work, he, too, launched a news website, The Montana Free Press<\/a>, last fall.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Adams decided to go the nonprofit route, meaning his site won\u2019t have advertising and will rely on donations, foundation funding and sponsorships from individuals and organizations.<\/p>\n

The Montana Free Press will focus on in-depth reporting, investigative journalism and news analysis. Like other nonprofit news outlets, it makes all of its content available to anyone who wants to use it.<\/p>\n

We have published some of Adams\u2019 work at Last Best News, as have newspapers and magazines across the state. He has also been doing on-air interviews with Eric Whitney on Montana Public Radio<\/a> and will soon be doing the same with Jackie Yamanaka on Yellowstone Public Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over at the Missoula Current, Kidston\u2019s model is closer to that of Last Best News, trying to cover a bit of everything on a regular basis, with an emphasis on local government reporting. He\u2019s also a good photographer and he has been making good use of video clips.<\/p>\n

Kidston said he hears every day from readers who are delighted to have an alternative to the Missoulian, which, like the Gazette, has a website that seems expressly designed to be annoying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re hungry for something different,\u201d Kidston said of his readers. \u201cThey really are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams said his goal is simply to provide the kind of in-depth coverage that traditional newspapers seem less and less capable of delivering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do believe there\u2019s an opportunity through what I\u2019m doing to strengthen journalism as a whole in Montana, even if it\u2019s just a stopgap until we really figure it out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"new<\/a>Adams hasn\u2019t paid himself yet, but he has incorporated as a nonprofit, assembled a board of directors and recently opened a bank account. He\u2019s going to make a big push for funding, which will include a series of gatherings around the state to introduce himself and his new venture.<\/p>\n

Like Kidston, he wants to be self-sustaining and eventually he\u2019d like to bring on another reporter or two.<\/p>\n

Kidston, who likewise hasn\u2019t drawn any pay yet, said he can probably make it until July on his savings, which gives him some time to sell more advertising. He doesn\u2019t sound like he\u2019ll give up easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve already decided I\u2019ll sell my house and move into a flop to make this work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There is another model of journalism under construction in Montana that is different from for-profits like Last Best News and Missoula Current and not quite like the nonprofit Montana Free Press, either.<\/p>\n

That is Mountain West News<\/a>, an online news site published under the aegis of the O\u2019Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West<\/a> in Missoula. Established as Headwaters News in 1999, it was for most of its life an aggregator of news from other sources, with some occasional original reporting.<\/p>\n

But last month, on its 17th anniversary, Mountain West News announced a new mission: \u201c(I)n response to the decline in news coverage and writing capacity we see throughout the region by traditional media, we will now produce substantive and fully contextualized news stories and features on the most important trends and developments shaping the larger Rocky Mountain West.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, it has partnered with the University of Montana School of Journalism<\/a> to fund a full-time reporting position, which was filled by Matthew Frank, an experienced reporter and adjunct faculty member at the journalism school.<\/p>\n

Initially at least, Frank\u2019s emphasis will be in-depth reporting on energy development in the region, since that is the subject \u201cwe think has the greatest potential for causing massive transformative change in our region.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hope others are as encouraged as I am by these fledgling attempts to reinvent journalism. The old model is creaking and clanking and seems ready to collapse, but people are still interested in the news and a lot of good reporters are itching to do good work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a question of which new model is best. From here on out, journalism is going to be delivered in a lot of different ways, with lots of different funding mechanisms.<\/p>\n

People who care about the future of Montana and who value good journalism need to support these new models with their readership, their donations, their advertising and their encouragement.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all in this together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talking to Martin Kidston last week, I almost felt as though I was interviewing myself again. The former Missoulian reporter quit his job at the end of December and launched an online newspaper, Missoula Current, in early January. \u201cI just decided I didn\u2019t want to work for a corporate paper,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a broken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1540,4044,4048,4045,4047,4049,62,4046],"class_list":["post-11066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-john-adams","tag-martin-kidston","tag-matthew-frank","tag-missoula-current","tag-mountain-west-news","tag-oconnor-center-for-the-rocky-mountain-west","tag-school-of-journalism","tag-the-montana-free-press","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}