A More Civil News: St. Andrew’s alum launches new journalism concept in Hawaii
Photo Credit: David Utt
St. Andrews Journalism class have a "long distance" interview with Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and St. Andrew's Alumni, getting a taste of what the future of Journalism could be like.
July 23, 2010 • Matthew Adams, Andres Grimm, and Peter James,
Filed under News
Mr. Pierre Omidyar, a St. Andrew’s graduate (class of 1984), is perhaps best known as the founder of the now-ubiquitous eBay online auction site. Perhaps less well known are his interests in philanthropy and journalism to help create a better world. In May, Omidyar launched a new concept in online journalism named Civil Beat (www.civilbeat.com) with two major goals: to bring more polite and engaged dialogue to local issues and to prove that online journalism is economically viable.
The following article is the result of a “virtual press conference” with Omidyar in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the Journalism class here in Potomac via Skype.
Towards a New Journalism
One of the characteristics of Civil Beat which distinguishes it from other news sources is its deliberately limited coverage. Civil Beat covers five major topics: the environment, education, Honolulu, Hawaii, and money. It focuses on local politics as opposed to international news, sports, or entertainment, which do not have as significant an impact on the community.
Building a news service around local politics also compensates for many other news services cutting their local news staff, and therefore local coverage, from their papers. Doing that limits both the readers’ knowledge of what is happening in their community as well as their ability to have an impact on it. In an attempt to get people involved, Civil Beat also serves as a forum for discussion on the issues covered in the stories.
Reporter-hosts, as they are called, are responsible not only for gathering and writing the news, but also for leading community discussions among the members. “We really have this vision of moving journalism back to center of conversation of civic affairs,” said Omidyar. “Instead of just observing what’s going on, we want to be in the middle of the conversation of what it means to be a part of our communities, to make them better. What does it mean, not only to vote, but to be a full citizen of our communities?”
Introducing a forum in a news service encourages members to be active in local issues. “The debating and discovering solutions aspect of reporting happens after you start following an issue. You want readers to talk about it, you want them to ask questions, and you want them to challenge you. All that is part of a learning process,” said Omidyar.
Keeping discussions civil is a major part of the debating and discovering process. Comments are moderated, and there is no anonymous posting. This way the forum becomes a productive environment for debating and exchanging ideas, instead of a place where opposing views can sling mud at each other. “It’s a question of helping people have more of an impact,” said Omidyar. “It’s the reporter-host’s job to lead the discussions so that people are asking the right questions, different views are being expressed, and people are being civil to one another.”
A New Economic Model for Online Journalism
Advertizing is the means for most other online news sites to make money, such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. However, Civil Beat has a user fee. Omidyar says that “up until this year everything has sort of been given away for free” on most news sites.
For advertizing to support a news organization, the paper or web site has to have a large audience. Because Civil Beat’s plan is to cover only local news, its audience will probably be smaller than a major city newspaper’s. Omidyar’s response to the lack of advertizing is a membership fee.
The price structure is based on four different subscription options. A free membership gives access to view a sampling of the whole site. A discussion membership ($.99) allows the member to enter discussions. A daily membership ($1.49) offers access to articles as well as discussions. The monthly membership ($19.99) grants access to the entire website. “The pricing that we charge is roughly the same as what people currently pay to subscribe to a daily newspaper,” said Omidyar.
By keeping Civil Beat local, Omidyar has designed a model that would use a smaller network of paying members to fund the staff writers who cover the stories. One very important advantage to this model is that “because we’re not printing papers and taking it to people’s homes we don’t need 100,00 subscribers to pay the salaries of these folks here and be sustainable.”
By focusing on local news and supporting itself with fees, Civil Beat will have a higher quality “metro” section than a national newspaper such as New York Times could do for New York City.
A Family History of Philanthropy
For Omidyar, the mixture of online entrepreneurship and concern for the community did not begin with Civil Beat. In fact, this combination has been a hallmark of his life’s work.
With his degree in computer science from Tufts in 1988, Omidyar started at the age of 28 to write the computer code which would be the foundation of the now-popular international auction site, eBay. At first, the new auction site was used for personal use and was hosted on one of his websites, but it came into the public domain and culture in 1998.
After founding and securing eBay as a dominant website with over 125 million members worldwide, Omidyar turned to philanthropy, supporting causes and businesses that help people around the world. “Everything that we have been doing in our family through our philanthropic organizations is really based on the notion that everybody is born inherently capable, but we don’t all have access to equal opportunity,” said Omidyar.
In 2004, Omidyar started the Omidyar Network, which “brings opportunity to people to improve the quality of their life.” Other organizations founded or supported by the family include the Ulupono Initiative, the Hawaii Community Foundation, Humanity United, and HopeLab, among many others.
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