MinnPost.com, Joel Kramer's new non-profit online news venture stepped out from behind the curtain today. The MinnPost.com site has the announcement, with links to coverage, including Paul Schmelzer Leonard Witt and Brian Lambert interviews.
Read especially Schmelzer, if you want a strong flavor of what Kramer is attempting and how he'll go about it.
I've refrained from commenting on this venture until the announcement. I'm not involved with it and have no inside knowledge, but I have had the opportunity to work with Kramer, going back more than two years ago at Growth & Justice. My comments here are based in part on that experience.
Kramer was initially unimpressed when I tried to get him to pay more attention to the blogosphere — largely because he saw blogs as largely opinionating driven by someone else's original reporting. As a former reporter, editor and publisher, he holds reporting in high esteem. This quote from the Schmelzer interview sound right to me about how his thinking has evolved:
What you and Brian [Lambert] do are good examples of what we're talking about. You do real reporting. I've looked around to find those kinds of blogs in town, and there really aren't that many who really start their day by trying to report. That's our model – people who start their day saying, "What can I find out that's new, and then how can I engage with the readers about it?"
Early speculation about what Kramer would do with MinnPost.com based upon what he had done before as a newsman struck me as off base. He's also a well-connected former political candidate and nonprofit executive with a very keen mind, so he brings a unique mix of experiences into this venture. And unlike some very smart, accomplished people I've known, he continues to learn, be open to other perspectives and appreciate talents other than his own.
These are all fine attributes for someone exploring terra incognita. Not to mention knowing Ferdinand and Isabella, plus a bunch of good sailors.
Kramer has unquestionably lined up some fine reporting and editing talent. Minnesota Monitor, not Minnesota Public Radio, is the nonprofit news organization most likely to feel the first heat from MinnPost.com's goal "to cover the whole range of human experience with
writers who have had a long time developing their contacts, their
understanding and who know what's going on."
However, it's also worth noting that many of these reporters with great knowledge and valuable contacts are emerging from a long period of working within a structured environment that valued different skills and behaviors. Shifting to a freelance /blogger mindset with its wham-bam mix of opinion, attitude and reporting — and where readers are buying the writer's daily product, not the paper that lands on the porch each morning — may not be an easy transition for all.
But it looks like Kramer is building an enterprise that can adapt, even if individuals don't. Whether that's enough, as a crappy reporter would say, remains to be seen.
