By Linda Perine / Democratic Woman’s Club
When Voice of San Diego (VOSD) began online publication nearly a decade ago the excitement in progressive San Diego was palpable. Here, finally, was an answer to the biased reporting that had been a hallmark of the UT for years (even before it was purchased by Doug Manchester).
The world of journalism was being revolutionized as the print media model became too expensive and cumbersome to compete in an instant access world. Slate and Salon opened their digital doors, and it seemed a new dawn of accountable news reporting was upon us.
San Diego journalist/entrepreneur Neil Morgan and Buzz Woolley founded VOSD. Those were the days of Enron by the Sea, pension underfunding, indicted council members, resigning Mayors and special elections (sound familiar?). Heady stuff for this newly minted, but brashly confident, team of young reporters including Scott Lewis, Andrew Donahue, Will Carless and Evan McLaughlin.
Indeed, for a time, VOSD was a beacon of hope for readers, mainly progressives, who longed for journalism that was smart, informed, a little sassy and not afraid to call out San Diego’s particularly self-reverent grand poobahs. There was a dare-to-hope feeling that this online start-up might live up to its ambitious mission statement “to consistently deliver ground-breaking investigative journalism for the San Diego region.”
And lord knows San Diego offered a target rich environment for investigative journalism.
During those halcyon years VOSD had the luxury of extensive financial backing from Buzz Woolley.
Show Me the Money
Source: http://voiceofsandiego.org/about-us/
But public non-profits have to keep bringing money in. In order to maintain its 501c3 status the organization had to make sure its money came from a wider base. Scott Lewis began to write less and work more with the nuts and bolts of running a web based non-profit dependent on donations. He took on the title of CEO. His tasks were to grow a membership, find generous foundations and donors, create strategic alliances and develop a functional website as the foundation of the enterprise. By all accounts he has done a credible job.
VOSD sponsors a number of conversations, breakfasts, forums and events throughout the year. Its annual Politifest has a permanent spot on the calendar of the politically interested. While many of the reporters from the 2005-2009 period have gone on to other endeavors, the finances of the group are improving over a tough 2011. Its 2012 IRS990 report shows a 41% jump in contributions/grants and a more than doubling of cash on hand over 2011.
The list of its top 20 contributors includes several funds from the San Diego Foundation, the continuing generosity of Buzz Woolley, Price Charities and $150,000 from Irwin and Joan Jacobs. Its community partners include American Medical Response, Hughes Marino, and SDG&E. Of the $1,372,714 in contributions and grants received in 2012, $366,877 was from memberships.
The idea of a non-profit, online news organization, one specifically created to provide “accountable” journalism, is a relatively new and untested concept. Indeed the idea was so intriguing that in 2010 the Columbia School of Journalism did a Case Study entitled “Not For Profit? The Voice of San Diego Experiment”
The success of the experiment will be determined by how VOSD deals with two related issues, inextricably linked to the question “Who Runs San Diego?”.
Two Critical Questions
Source: http://voiceofsandiego.org/about-us/
First of all, it’s all about the money. Some may think that non-profits somehow rise above the struggle for the legal tender. Of course this is not the case and non-profits spend a very large amount of time and energy in search of the kindness of strangers. VOSD has many energetic and innovative efforts to raise money: its Meeting of the Minds program, Community Partners Program, and Politifest, to name a few. Just this week it began an attempt to crowd fund a new investigative reporter covering housing and development.
Just as for-profit journalistic enterprises face questions about how much advertisers (and owners) influence what gets covered and how it gets covered, VOSD has faced questions regarding how it covers, or doesn’t cover, news involving high end donors and large corporate entities. Its coverage of the Plaza de Panama controversy, involving Irwin Jacobs, was criticized. Many readers took Lisa Halverstadt to task for what they perceived as a less than balanced reporting of issues involving orca captivity at Sea World. Others, myself included, thought VOSD overlooked some very important relationships and motivations in telling the story of the political demise of Bob Filner.
These and other concerns have taken some of the bloom off the rose of the hopes of the progressive community that VOSD would take on the powers that be and do the ground-breaking investigative reporting it promises in its mission statement.
Which brings us to the 2nd major issue: bias. Scott Lewis, the CEO of VOSD, is very clear when he speaks about bias in reporting. He does not even pretend not to be biased. The VOSD website guidelines for reporters states in oversized letters There is No Such Thing as Objectivity.
Many would agree with that assessment, and even give VOSD a shout out for the sort of world weary hipster-noir blatancy of that statement.
But here’s the thing: to just poke your cyber thumb in your journalistic chest and say “I’m biased. Everyone is.” is not enough. If you claim your bias, but fail to identify what your bias is, you’ve left off the most important part of the conversation.
Source: http://voiceofsandiego.org/about-us/
In seeking the answer to the media segment of our series “Who Runs San Diego?” we got a pretty clear picture of where Doug Manchester and John Lynch stand. They told us when they bought the UT that they really wanted to advance their extremely conservative agenda, that they really liked making money and they bought that nice little newspaper and the land it sits on to do just those things.
VOSD does not provide that level of clarity. Certainly they have a nice turn of phrase: “We are guided by an ability to be transparent and independent, to clearly assess what’s going on in our community and have the courage to plainly state the truth”.
It would be good, given that there is no such thing as objectivity, to provide some clarification as to which truth it is that will be plainly stated.
Who are the Winners and Losers?
San Diego wins having an online publication that works hard to bring the interested citizens information and venues to share information and ideas. Could it be fiercer? Yes.
San Diego loses if we don’t address the undue influence of money in our public discourse. In the VOSD circumstance crowdfunding may help offset the possibility of undue influence by large donors. If many give a little, it clears the path for “ground-breaking investigative journalism.”
What Simple Thing Can You Do to Address the Problem?
Give a couple of bucks to crowdfunding. Give VOSD the opportunity and encouragement to be a little fiercer.
Write an opinion piece. I am astounded at the expertise and concern demonstrated by many activists in San Diego.
Tell your story. Tell it at VOSD. Tell it at San Diego Free Press. Tell it at OB Rag. Tell it at your non-Manchester-owned community weekly (which we’ll be covering next week).
Linda Perine is the President of DWC, an avid cyclist and tennis player.
This is the fifth installment of the Who Runs San Diego? series, a project of the Democratic Woman’s Club, published weekly in the San Diego Free Press. The Democratic Woman’s Club mission is to promote Democratic Party principles including equality of opportunity, a level playing field, and fair and equal treatment for all.
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I see a lot of ads on VOSD, a lot of donate buttons and not a lot of criticism of the local power structure, not a lot of reporting about what goes on at City Hall. Basically, it seems to me that it is just another money making enterprise despite the non-profit status which, as you point out, means nothing insofar as content is concerned. It’s just an alternative business model. They seem to deal in secondary, non-essential, non-inflammatory topics which are not a threat to anyone especially the business sector. I saw nothing on there about the minimum wage issue, for instance. Tame, innocuous, sucking up to the conventional tastes of its funders – that’s what you get from VOSD.
Hi John,
I’m a bit startled by your point that we “seem to deal in secondary, non-essential, non-inflammatory topics which are not a threat to anyone especially the business sector.” Specifically, you said you saw nothing about the minimum wage issue.
This is a bit troubling, not that you would think it but that we failed to expose you to all the coverage and analysis we did do.
You can see it all here, in our section about the minimum wage issue: http://voiceofsandiego.org/category/minimum-wage/
A sampling:
– How fears about the inflation part of the new policy may be overblown.
– What it will mean for “workers-in-training.”
– How it will be enforced. Analyzing how the living wage is dealt with.
– Lessons from 13 other cities that have done it.
– A fact check on Todd Gloria’s claim that 80 percent of small businesses already pay above the minimum wage.
– several op-eds from community leaders and business folks about it.
– On restaurant that’s now sharing servers’ tips with cooks. That’s a big deal in the industry.
– My commentary on the impact and fears about tipped workers.
– Just last week, we featured on our podcast a businessman who supports the wage increase.
We even sought out an op-ed from a City Councilwoman in Seattle to talk about how they did it.
Our reporters regularly dig into essential, inflammatory topics like school performance issues, Sea World, density issues in neighborhoods. In fact, we only care about essential topics.
Of all the criticisms we deserve, that we didn’t cover the minimum wage issue is not fair.
Can anyone recall reading a serious investigation by VoSD on a matter involving
lots of misappropriation and abuse of power which brought about the fall of an
established figure (other than Bob Filner)? And how is the truth served (as Scott
Lewis’ invocation says VoSD intends to do) by an admission of some shapeless
lack of objectivity?
Linda,
I’m not going to complain about an analysis that puts Voice of San Diego within a series about “Who runs San Diego?” and ends with a plea to donate to our service.
So, thank you.
I would have loved to talk to you about your observations. I will take issue only with your point that we don’t provide the level of clarity about our bias that the U-T does.
First, the U-T’s news editors and staff would disagree that they are pursuing a conservative agenda and that it is their explicit bias. No matter what their editorial said.
And the top editor would back them up. There’s an unfortunate cognitive dissonance there. On the one hand, the editorial board is able to speak on behalf of the paper. And yet, the news team — the most important part of the paper — plainly and regularly denies that group speaks for it. Which is it???
I’m insulted that you think we’re being less straightforward with San Diego than that!
More importantly, I agree we could be more clear about our values and biases. We do not have a specific Constitution to which I must refer, that lays out our bias. I’ve often thought we should come up with as close to that as we can but we haven’t yet.
Thanks for the nudge to keep working on that project.
But I will reject any push that we “choose a side” and I can’t help but feel like that’s what you really want. I am not Voice of San Diego — I’m one big part of it, sure. But even I have some very liberal and some conservative views. I don’t consider myself a moderate but I’m fiercely nonpartisan.
And that’s just me. The staff has diverse perspectives, as does the board and our 2,000 members.
But we are united on some basic points: Schools can be better. Roads and transit can be better. Local government can be more efficient and should be held to a higher standard of excellence. Our children will need options for affordable housing. Good jobs come from investment and we need to make sure we do our best to welcome investment while protecting our quality of life. Our environment can be cleaner and we care about it.
This manifests itself every day in Voice of San Diego. We surfaced the fact, for instance, that some areas of town had pitiful emergency response times. This became a major issue in the mayoral race. We did not take a side on what the solution should be but we demanded a solution.
We will not take a side or pick a team and say we’re conservative or progressive. Because frankly, I don’t know that we could agree. But we can be clearer on what we care about and those are the things we care about.
Thanks again. You correctly called this an experiment. It’s been nearly 10 years. There’s no path for us. No model to follow. We’re trying to learn, pivot and improve every day.
Scott
Spin and PR from the Voice’s CEO. That’s what he does best.
But without knowing when to stop. Two examples:
On ‘surfacing’ poor emergency response times – “We did not take a side on what the solution should be but we demanded a solution ” (wow!).
Conflicting, nonsequential, vaporous thoughts – “We will not take a side or pick a team and say we’re conservative or progressive. Because frankly, I don’t know that we could agree. But we can be clearer on what we care about and those are the things we care about” (huh? please!).
I could name many stories Voice has published that omitted or distorted facts inconvenient to the writer’s/editor’s/donor’s bias. In the first months of Voice’s existence, I tried to encourage writers/editors to publish more complete coverage on some issues, and provided supporting, useful information, hoping that the problems simply derived from poor research skills. My efforts were met with stone wall indifference. I gave up, and I gave up reading their (awfully formatted) web page.
THANK YOU, Linda – been waiting for a critical look at VOSD. Quality reporting, yes, but clueless in analysis. If you don’t understand what you’re looking at, your reports will reflect that. I’ll take VOSD over U-T or any purely, unabashedly corporate outlet of course. I agree that the spotlight is often not shone where we need it to be, and money is ALWAYS an influence whether it’s profit or non-profit. The analysis is lacking. They often write like everything is entertainment and nothing’s on the line. The coverage of Vergara v. California is what sealed the deal for me… if you can’t discern between an attack on education workforce and “education reform”, all your reporting is almost useless to me. I’m increasingly tired of the whole traditional model of news outlets because they turn politics into a spectator-sport and don’t encourage action. But when I must, viewer-supported news and analysis or nothing for me. To hell with all the harmless “non-partisan” milque-toast, toadie non-profits. I’ll trust VOSD when they’re financed with membership/viewer dues or small donations.
The voice of LINDA PERINE, democratic women’ s club, BRAVO. Good analysis, clear thinking, much admiration….
Personally, with some hope for an online forum in SD, I joined VOSD, but then I
de-memberized…2 times, because of their obvious slant toward conventional wisdom, and beer gardens…
I did appreciate a personal return from scott Lewis to my response to the first “politifest” where they advertised: “politics can be fun”… And I said, politics should be more like good parenting than fun…
My heart is with the San Diego free press because they really engage the voice of the people… And they want to hear YOUR voice , so send them your stuff…
And also with the Jacobs, because they support everybody in San Diego. thank you.
Thank you for your observations Linda. It reminded me that 2 months ago I posted a photo on my Facebook page, showing the faces of 12 Voice of San Diego’s employees, as offered in their website “contact” pages.
There are five men and seven women. They all appear to be white. They are all rather young. And they are smiling and look very happy in the pictures from their contact page.
I compiled the photos after seeing an ad with the face of a young woman of color on the VofSD website. I had misunderstood the context of the photo, and for a moment believed she was a recent hire. When I realized my mistake I was curious about the make up of the staff. That’s when I visited their profile pages and compiled the image.
So while it’s great to acknowledge there’s “no such thing as objectivity” in reporting (or in much of life, for that matter), it’s also important to have some diversity around you in the workplace if you’re sincerely trying to understand and expand the limits of your perspective. It’s impossible to know how biased/subjective you are if there’s not someone around you to illustrate it by offering a different point of view, and/or having a different skin color, sexual orientation, primary language, or ethnic/social/economic background, etc.
(I can’t speak to the sexual orientation since that’s a bit harder to discern from a photo of the staff, but given recent battles over marriage equality etc. it would be good to add that perspective as well.)
So in my opinion that’s what’s missing from the (young, white ) Voice of San Diego pages: diversity of perspective. Of course I may be misunderstanding the photos, or overlooking some people, and I fully anticipate a spirited response from VofSD on this often sensitive topic.
Recruiting a more diverse staff is a priority. I’ve worked hard over the last several years to make sure we transition from the all-white, almost all-male, staff we used to be. Now there are more women than men. Mario Koran, on the right side of your photo, is of Mexican descent and Paula Moore, bottom right, is Native American. We just developed and launched a paid internship program for the purpose of creating more diverse potential applicants. Two young Latina women have already gone through it. Ana Ceballos recently got a job based off this experience in Northern California and says it was the best experience she had. We’ll keep working.
Thank you Scott.
What’s the range of ages represented by your staff?
And do you think it has been difficult to attract people of color and/or of different ages and background to work in San Diego because of the city’s reputation as a Republican, military, conservative and expensive city to live?
Mid-20s to mid-40s. Our staff has gotten older than it once was.
Journalism itself has a diversity problem. I don’t think it’s hard to attract people to work for us from around the country, as evidenced by the makeup of our current staff. But yes, we have determined we can’t wait for applicants of diverse backgrounds to come to us. We need to develop and recruit them proactively.
It certainly doesn’t help that it’s very expensive to live here, even with our respectable pay. More difficult for recruiting very talented people is the lack of other opportunities here. Many of the best writers gravitate to San Francisco, D.C. L.A. and New York because there are so many competing opportunities. We have comparably very few chances to advance in San Diego.
It’s not just journalism It’s often said San Diego is a start up and end up town, esp when it comes to military and business.
Many small companies get started here with hopes of being acquired by a larger corporations. And many CEOs and military officers retire here when they finish their careers.
But There’s just not a lot of room in the middle to broaden and expand, in many professions, with the possible exception of healthcare and education.
Linda Perrine is way too charitable to VOSD which started out well (enough) but rapidly fell apart, probably for lack of sufficient funds and backer-meddling. Excellent early VOSD staff went on to greener pastures and the replacements were never up to doing justice to the tasks that CEO Scott Lewis describes as VOSD’s main concerns — schools, roads and public transit, quality of local government, affordable housing, job-creation and preserving the environment. All crucial topics requiring constant attention.
I believe these subjects truly are Lewis’ genuine interest. He correctly describes duality/division/difference over at the U-T between its professional news staff and the right-wing bias of the publisher’s editorial page. The U-T is not just “fish-wrap.” I think Lewis loves journalism and believes in its mission to make the world a better place and he is young enough and technically savvy enough to have been enthralled with the offer made him by well-regarded, well-connected, well-meaning honchos to run an experimental members-only online daily journal.
But there was VOSD mission-creep into tech gadgetry and social media; also frequent changes in format and limitations on commenters’ access; communal gatherings took precedence over serious sustained news coverage. Finally, there was out-of-the-blue VOSD shilling to end the historic hard-won coastal height limit (which would favor
dense development;) extreme bias in favor of changeling mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher (who was supported by major VOSD funder Irwin Jacobs;) and a concurrent scurrilous vendetta against mayoral candidate Congressman Bob Filner which long preceded any allegation of Filner’s sexual improprieties. It was the end of the honeymoon for this VOSD reader and member.
VOSD started out pioneering, but over its decade seems to have lost its way. Maybe too much touting of craft beer events. Or too little political independence and too much business-model influence. For sure, too little money to make great hires. Scott Lewis
needs richer angels who will pay the bills, let him run the show and scrupulously keep their hands off.
re. “Scott Lewis needs richer angels who will pay the bills, let him run the show and scrupulously keep their hands off “– as it is said in my tradition: from your mouth to god’s ear…
Oh god my headache is coming back again..
Thanks for helping us follow the money in local media. Well done.
I think Perrine is accurate, and shows a valid charity with the VoSD experiment in non-profit, online, public-benefit news media. I’ve generally liked the quality, objectivity, and professional reporting of VoSD staff over the years, and I contribute small donations, but I’ve also had a tough time stomaching some of their stuff, especially some of the multi-media commentary that was produced for other local broadcast media interests. That’s probably as it should be, if I agreed with them all the time, they wouldn’t be doing anything for me. Yet it concerns me that, like other Public Media corporations, they get much of their funding from large corporations and corporate foundations, large donations from private individuals, and a minority of their funding from small contributions from members. I would like to see this model work, but I’d also like to see a commitment from the tax-exempt, non-profit, public benefit corporation to limit large donations to, say, 10% of total annual revenues, just to avoid the appearance of bias.
One other thing to think on, Linda says “If you claim your bias, but fail to identify what your bias is, you’ve left off the most important part of the conversation.” I don’t think that’s enough, as a professional journalist you need to make a commitment to the objective truth, and that means knowing your biases, exposing them, but then attempting to avoid them, and opening your reporting to valid and accountable critics to correct any bias or errors in your work. Just because everyone has a point of view, doesn’t mean that the facts aren’t objectively knowable.
http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp