Mark Armstrong

This graph, from the brand new Pocket for Publishers, is a great example.

It’s the Pocket activity for “Bitter Pill,” Time magazine’s (incredible, go subscribe and read it) 25,000-word story on the secret costs of healthcare in America, written by Steven Brill.

In green, you can see the daily “saves” to Pocket. In red, the daily “opens” in Pocket. Three days after the story was published, “opens” overtook “saves,” and this story has gone on to have an open rate of 50% and an active lifespan of 19 days.

When readers were given the time to come back to it, they did.

I’m excited to be working on Pocket for Publishers (to my publisher friends, go sign up! It’s free), because I think it’s finally answering some important questions about save-for-later. And it’s providing clarity to the sites that are investing in high-quality storytelling that retains its value for weeks, months, and years.

This week’s discussion about paying writers has led some to argue that publishers, by asking for free or cheap work, and writers, by accepting little to no wages, are devaluing the work of professional writers. 

What else is devaluing the work of professional writing on the web? 

1. By having this debate, for free, on Twitter.com, Branch.com and Tumblr.com, are we devaluing the work of professional writers who might write about it for a publisher that is paying them? 

2. If you wrote a print magazine story for a publisher, then asked that publisher to “unlock it on the web for free,” are you undercutting or devaluing the work of those who write exclusively for the web? 

3. If you only share free content on Twitter and Facebook, versus paywalled content or ebooks, are you undercutting or devaluing the work of publishers who paywall their content? 

4. If you publish free content on the web, are you killing the ancillary revenue that a writer could bring in from future reprint rights for those stories, or the ability to repurpose those stories into a book? 

5. If you pay freelancers, are you killing the opportunity to provide healthcare and stability to a full-time writer instead?

I’m not trying to be flip, but I think we, the Internet, are all somewhat responsible for the sorry state of freelance writing. I hope we can take steps to improve it. 

For what it’s worth, Longreads is trying to do its small part: We currently set aside ~30% of our Member dues to pay writers and publishers for reprint rights to our weekly Member Picks. 

And last night, Pocket’s founder Nate Weiner spoke at the SF Hacks/Hackers journalism panel and asserted our commitment to publishers and how we can help solve the bigger problem of supporting high-quality content on the web. I’m excited for what’s to come on this front. 

I was saddened today to learn that NBC News is shutting down Everyblock, the Knight-funded local project created by Adrian Holovaty, Wilson Miner, Dan O’Neil and Paul Smith. It was an exciting attempt to help organize information and data for cities and neighborhoods—and it was inspiring to watch them attempt something both local and scalable, in a way that many people (aside from maybe Patch) have abandoned.

***

I’ve lived in some amazing neighborhoods over the past five years, but I can’t say I ever knew them like a local should. We’ve had kids and moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and now to Oakland.

Now, after seven months on the West Coast, it occurs to me that I know my neighborhood more deeply than I ever did in New York.

It’s not because New York is crowded and anonymous. It’s because preschool has started.

There is suddenly a geographic social scene in which we are automatically included. And it made me realize that when we talk about local, many of us are really talking about kids.

Our social media lives are global, but in our pre-kid lives, the geographic social scene revolved around bars and restaurants and concerts and sporting events. But we were never tied to our neighborhoods. We could go out in Cobble Hill, but we could just as easily go out in the West Village. Our friends were dispersed everywhere around the city. It was relatively easy for everyone to travel to each other.

School changes the boundaries dramatically. Where you decide to live can be decided by the reputation of the school district. And suddenly, you must care about what’s in your immediate vicinity.

For many, the best scenario is to live within blocks of the schools that your children will attend. Being close to school makes everything easier—for friendships, playdates, sporting events, fundraisers, carpooling, and when they’re old enough, walking to school. My parents were newcomers to Fresno when I was born, and they told me what every parent tells me: We met all of our friends through our kids’ schools.

***

In the 1980s, my dad also met people through a local club called the Junior Chamber of Commerce, or Jaycees. For him, there were business reasons for getting to know people in his community. He was an insurance agent, so his network of potential clients came from local businesses and the relationships he developed in his neighborhood.

Think of your friends. Are many of them still working for a truly “local” or locally dependent business? Or do they commute by car or train from their suburb to a larger city? Or do they simply work on the Internet?

The truly local business is an endangered species, which means there are fewer advertisers for small local newspapers, and fewer people who are interested in their cities for “business” reasons. I’m not necessarily worried about how things are changing so rapidly, but it could help explain why none of my friends are members of the Jaycees, or Rotary Club, or Kiwanis. Local clubs are aging, and there are fewer young people coming in to replace them. Their social lives are elsewhere. They are connecting globally for global work.

***

This is all to say: I think the app or company that “solves” local will probably be a parenting app. Not necessarily a “local” app.

I’m certainly not suggesting that only parents care about their communities—that’s not the case at all, and every city will have a diverse makeup of people who make their community special.

But what I am suggesting is that parenting is something can force a passive resident (like myself) to suddenly pay closer attention to what’s going on around me. It’s what made me realize there is a lot of local information missing from my media diet. And I want a remedy.

When we moved to Oakland, we asked people: How do we find out what’s going on? They suggested blogs like Susan Mernit’s Oakland Local, but they also recommended a number of different Yahoo Groups and Google Groups, mostly for parents. These private forums (and parents want them private) are still the backbone of local conversation across the United States, and no one has introduced a better approach yet.

I’m seeing more possibilities everywhere I look: Jeff Atwood’s Discourse.org, announced this week, seems perfect for local. So could something like GroupMe or Couple or Avocado.

It’s nice to see that Patch is still here, but it’s also slightly depressing to think they’re the only ones trying. If you’re working on something local, I’d love to hear about it.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if, one day, we all discover a great new parenting app that sneaks up on us and then reveals that it’s really for everyone in the neighborhood. 

*That’s not true, exactly. I did care enough about “local” in 2002 that I started a blog about Fresno (RIP Fresyes). But I was living in New York at the time and it was mostly about Kevin Federline. So it doesn’t quite count.

Dean Starkman, Mathew Ingram and Gangrey are all continuing the conversation about whether there is a “Longform Meltdown” at the major newspapers. 

Since I don’t think the data shows anything as dramatic as what Starkman and CJR’s headline suggests—and putting aside the question of whether “longform” means narrative or investigative or both—I thought I’d ask a new question: Is there a better way to gauge how longform stories and the people who publish them are faring in 2013? I’d personally love to track the following: 

1. Total # of publishers who produce more than 6 longform stories per year—and pay writers for them.

2. Total # of longform writers who have healthcare.

3. Total # of freelance longform writers whose number of assignments and revenue from those pieces is growing year over year.

4. Diversity of bylines

5. Total # of publishers who hire and train new reporters with a focus on narrative / investigative journalism.