The Connecticut News Project

Here is an updated post on the Connecticut News Project.  It looks like they will start producing material at the beginning of next year.


I notice on the Courant Alumni Refugee site, the part about being an "investigative" journalism organization is crossed out, and replaced with the word "online."  I hope they really understand the difference between the two.

It seems as though online news organizations have two competing strategies to get audience:

• Create lots of stories, spending little time on each one, and hope that people will click back often during the day to see what new stories have been posted in the last few hours.
• Create fewer stories, but try to make content that people will be likely to share with their friends. 

Unless you have an unlimited number of staffers, I don't think you can do both.

On the business side, it looks like in a general sense they might be trying to push newspaper-style journalism into the same category as arts organizations like symphonies, theaters, ballet troupes or opera companies that the market probably cannot support, but which many people consider good things to have around for cultural reasons, and for civic pride.  However, these sorts of arts organizations rely on goodwill in the form of donations, which they might get through pledge drives (like at Connecticut Public Broadcasting), and in the form of government support or cooperation, which they will much less likely to get (most Hartford politicians spit on the ground every time they say the Courant's name).  If a nonprofit journalism organization writes some stories showing a governor in a bad light, then goes to that governor's arts and culture agency seeking money, will the organization get the funds?  If the journalism organization survives without the money, with that organization think twice the next time it considers posting a story showing the governor in a poor light?

There already is a nonprofit journalism organization in Hartford -- WNPR.  (Saturday night, they had three photos of John Dankosky spread around their page.  Huh?)  Perhaps the two organizations can work together?  I wonder if it would have been more efficient for this new organization to affiliate with Connecticut Public Broadcasting.  I hope they don't end up competing for the same foundation dollars.  Hartford has a very good symphony, but I'm not sure it could support two.

It looks like The Connecticut News Project has already grabbed some domain names.