This is part of series looking at different examples of online-only news sites:
Part 1: MinnPost.com: can traditional print journalists strive online – and how?
Part 2: LePost.fr: when traditional media experiment with all-new approaches to journalism
Part 3: Rue89.com: pro-am success story shows path to newspapers

There’s been a lot of coverage since the announcement - many of Kramer’s friends and former staffers are still in the business. Here’s what was originally posted on the Editors Weblog, before we interviewed publisher Joel Kramer and managing editor Roger Buoen. We’re cutting short on background facts but if you want more, take a look at MinnPost.com’s homepage, which lists recent press and blog articles about the project.

From print to online: from either hard news or soft opinion to “news analysis”

Online begets online reporting and writing

All posts and content will have an element of original reporting, but the content will essentially be “News Analysis” – a concept Kramer pushed at the Star Tribune, somewhere midway between pure factual news and opinion. He doesn’t believe this will lead to opinion being confused for fact, but reporters “must be candid and give full disclosure.”

Online journalism, according to MinnPost’s managing editor Roger Buoen (also a former editor at the Strib), differs from print in two main ways. In terms of reporting, “the print product has a finality to it,” whether online journalism can be dynamic, as stories can be updated with new information. In terms of writing, “stories on the web have a much more conversational tone.”

The more experience, the more to “unlearn”

One might expect a team of reporters with much print journalism background to be reticent to adopt the tone of bloggers. To the contrary, Buoen seemed enthusiastic about the change and looked forward to loosen up the writing style, although he admitted that “some writers will struggle with it.”

Buoen and his writers will actually practice online writing before MinnPost launches. Buoen noted, not without irony, that one of his friends who went through the same transition “said he had a lot of things to unlearn.” It does seem strange that seasoned writers train to emulate the kind of writing that, a few years ago, was heavily criticized by traditional print journalists. Albeit, MinnPost’s reporters will practice ‘online writing’ in the lead to the launch.

“We’re trying to take the best of traditional print journalism and bring it to the best of online,” said Buoen.

Content online: not necessarily breaking news

The web-first consensus nowadays is that news in print often focuses more on analytical pieces and commentary, whereas the online world is reserved for breaking news and constant updates. MinnPost is going against the tide, loyal to the idea that quality content will be enough to attract its audience.

“Our philosophy is to be a significant second read,” said Kramer. “We assume the reader is getting a lot of news elsewhere,” confirmed Buoen.

Whereas newspapers have a comprehensive approach, MinnPost’s coverage will be closer to news magazines, said Kramer. Here’s the outline for MinnPost’s coverage:
- 2 exclusive lead stories per day, which will be fully developed, often written in a news feature style, hopefully supplemented by some other media.
- About 40 “Newsy posts” – news analyses – published per week (eight per day, five days a week), which will be “a kind of blend between a blog and a news story,” said Buoen. MinnPost’s journalists will usually be covering their traditional beat.
- A pure commentary section, with several op-ed-style pieces per day.
- A staff-written “Essay of the day’s news”: a daily round-up of international and local news based on “alternative sources,” said Buoen, although admittedly it’s bound to eventually carry news from the Twin cities’ main papers or other mainstream sources.

Hiring freelance journalists, loosening the edits

Journalists, who are all freelancers (about 25 right now but MinnPost expects about 40 upon launch), will be paid between $100 for a news post to $600 for a lead story. Most of the current journalists come from a print background (there have been many layoffs in recent times at the St Paul Pioneer Press and Star Tribune), but Buoen hopes to hire more online-savvy writers before the launch. Only the six-person editorial team of MinnPost is on a regular payroll.

The editorial policies of MinnPost.com will follow its online journalism model accordingly. Whereas the editing of lead stories will “be very similar to traditional editorial oversight,” said Buoen, the newsy posts – which will be the bulk of content – will be “lightly edited.” These posts will mostly be checked for style and grammar, more so than accuracy. Readers will have to trust the experience and fact-checking habits of MinnPost’s veteran print reporters.

MinnPost is also considering the possibility of a print version with limited circulation (a couple thousand copies), which would be available at high traffic locations. But this is not an essential requirement for what is decidedly an online journalism venture.

“We’re not in the distribution business,” said Kramer.


Can the “written word be predominant online”?

Is multimedia essential or supplementary?

Multimedia won’t be the main priority for MinnPost – at least according to Kramer, who strongly believes in the news-first concept.

“The site is open to audio and video, but that's clearly seen as an add-on. In the Internet age, it should be there at launch,” commented Ken Doctor.

Well, “there will clearly be audio and video” when MinnPost first launches, said Kramer. It simply won’t be the main focus: “the written word will be predominant” and video and audio will be “supplementary” said Kramer, despite skepticism expressed by new media proponents, such as Doctor.

Multimedia for the savvy, quality for the newsy: know your market

Why not focus on multimedia in a day and age when newspapers are putting all their online efforts into producing content on new platforms?

After conducting market research, Kramer believes that MinnPost’s target audience, the 15-20% of the Twin Cities’ population who care about content and go through several sources to get their news (not to be confused with news junkies), is primarily interested in the quality of content – not the richness of multimedia.

MinnPost won’t cater to the general public (let’s say he’s aiming for 15-20% of the one million people who read the Star Tribune on Sundays). Neither will Minnpost be aiming for the 5-10% of the audience Kramer calls the “avant-garde,” who puts a high premium on bells and whistles for news consumption.

MinnPost currently has no particular plans to include user content, apart from comments (to be filtered through editorially since Kramer would only “want comment as long as it’s consistent with quality”). To be fair though, Kramer and his team are still at an early stage and he is open to the possibilities of user-generated content – also mentioning his interest in the concept of crowd-sourcing.

Kramer also evoked a news gap in the Twin Cities, as more and more people seem to believe the quality of local coverage (mainly provided by the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press) is decreasing. MinnPost specifically aims to fulfill the needs of this disappointed and newsy audience.

Is quality enough in the digital age?

Some questions - doubts - remain: will MinnPost’s content be of such high quality that it can compete with other high-quality news sources that do offer more multimedia or ‘new media’ perks? And don’t the very notions of news ‘content,’ and good journalism, now extend beyond text articles, with new storytelling processes enabled by other media? Is Kramer underestimating the attractive power and journalistic benefits of these digital forms?

Nobody can be really sure. And this approach does come from a veteran newsman, who has long studied the market. There are other justifications to this orientation though, of a more economic nature.

Not-for-profit and online: a journalism experiment in challenging times

One of the reasons for ‘downplaying’ multimedia and privileging quality content is easily understandable: limited resources. With relatively few resources and an experienced staff to compensate, there simply isn’t much margin to carry out multimedia experiments.

The decision to venture into an online-only publication was motivated, quite simply, by economics.  “The curves are crossing. Time is now,” said Kramer. It doesn’t take much figuring out to understand that operating costs online are dirt-cheap compared to print. On the other hand, this is also true for online ad revenues.

Why non-profit? Apart from the $1.1 million MinnPost received in original donations, its viability is fully dependent on reader donations (from “Cub Reporter” to “Media Mogul”-sized donations) and online advertising. It’s not a small detail that some of the old print families were among the main contributors to original funding, illustrating how they too are opening to new forms of journalism. Kramer realizes MinnPost’s model may be “specific,” and that it’s an experiment. It’s a potential business model, and has been proposed before (sometimes successfully, MinnPost drew some inspiration from ventures such as Voice of San Diego).

As mentioned previously, MinnPost positions itself as a quality second read for the Twin Cities’ news-craving audience. As such, it considers neither the St Paul Pioneer Press nor the Strib as direct competitors.

And vice-versa, “we welcome any competition if it's from people who are committed to journalism," said Nancy Barnes, the Star Tribune's top editor, adding that she didn't view the new site as a threat (although there must be an element of cautious rivalry on both sides).

In fact, Buoen doesn’t identify any direct competitors in the area. Apart from the local news radio station, the few existing online publications can’t boast MinnPost’s credible reporters. “It’s a really original idea, at least here,” he said. So if Kramer’s intuitions about his target audience are correct, his venture could attract a sizable market share with little fear of competition.

Yet both the traditional press and new media organizations will be observing MinnPost’s launch, to see if its business model holds together.

“I’m very confident that the quality of journalism will be good,” said Buoen. “Will it be sustainable? Honestly, I have no idea.”

The launch date is still undetermined, sometime in the next few months. We’ll look forward to seeing how it fares.

Source: Joel Kramer, publisher and editor of MinnPost.com – Roger Buoen, managing editor of MinnPost.com – Poynter Institute – ContentBridges – New York Times – Editor & Publisher - Top illustration from the Star Tribune (Poynter article)