"The Examiner.com Now Wants to Become A Bastion Of Citizen Journalism" (Oct 2008)

[jody]

The Examiner.com Now Wants to Become A Bastion Of Citizen Journalism (TechCrunch)

The Examiner.com is not what it appears to be. It is not the online outlet for the Examiner newspapers (the San Francisco Examiner,Baltimore Examiner, and Washington, D.C. Examiner) owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz. It is, however, owned by the same Anschutz-backed company that owns those newspapers, the Clarity Media Group in Denver. That’s how it got the URL.

But the Examiner.com has no use for professional journalists. It is instead an experiment in pure citizen journalism. Right now Examiner sites have officially launched in beta for five cities—San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Denver, and Seattle. Although other cities like New York are coming along. The sites have been live for a couple months without any promotion, and collectively are already attracting 1.3 million visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore (which is nearly double from July). CEO Michael Sherrod says the internal numbers show 3 million monthly uniques.

Each site offers up hyper-local news written by contributors called “examiners.” Sherrod, who used to run worldwide communities for AOL and was with Digital Cities in the mid-1990s, has already recruited 800 examiners and wants to get to 1,000 by the end of the year. These examiners might have their own blogs, but the Examiner offers them a bigger platform to get their voice heard. The point, though, is not to write about themselves, but rather about what is happening in their communities.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

These writers are vetted and paid based on how many page views and advertising clicks their articles can produce. The pay is not a lot. It starts at a $2.50 for every thousand page views. The median amount each examiner s making right now is $25 a month, although Sherrod has written a check for as high as $1,700. Anschutz is bank-rolling the whole project. He is the only investor (the amount is not being disclosed).

The few “examiner” sites I’ve visited have material that is no better than or more authoritative than posts on any forum like DU.

Moreover, given that “examiners” are paid for so many page views and advertising clicks, DUers should consider before they click on a DU post that takes them to an examiner.com site particularly when the DU poster her/him self may have a vested interest in racking up views, perhaps even is an “examiner”.

[hlthe2b]

1. former reporters from the Rocky Mtn News are supposedly...

starting up a site... I'm assuming they are not associated with this? Anyone know?

[DavidDvorkin]

6. No, that's this one:

http://www.indenvertimes.com/

It's already up and running, although they're still looking for subscribers.

[hlthe2b]

7. ahh, thanks

You aren't related to Jeffrey Dvorkin (Canadian and American journalist of some acclaim), are you?

[DavidDvorkin]

9. Nope. Jeffrey Dvorkin is not

related to David Dvorkin, the science fiction writer of far less acclaim than he deserves. :)

[jody]

8. Does indenvertimes.com have (a) an editorial review board to ensure quality and (b) are writers paid

based on the number of views to her/his article?

[DavidDvorkin]

10. I have no idea

I'm guess that the answer to (a) is Yes and to (b) is No, but that's just my guess, based on the professional quality and background of the people involved in the venture.

There might be more info on their site.

[Gormy Cuss]

2. Interesting that two of the beta sites are cities with 'Examiner' newspapers.

I made the mistake of thinking that a piece by a San Franciscan writer was a link to that paper.

[jody]

4. I made the same mistake. I was angry that examiner.com was masquerading as a legitimate news source.

Even more angry that DUers could be duped by posts linking to examiner.com just to build view count.

I wonder how Skinner feels about DU being used as an avenue, perhaps even scam, to build examiner.com view counts?

[NashVegas]

3. Professionals Are Getting Very Uptight About This Stuff

The people I talk to wouldn't mind the competition so much if people on the write-for-clicks sites weren't selling themselves so short and forcing the payscale down for everyone.

Ask a newspaper writer how much they'll make for a story per day in a paper with, say a 30k circulation. I'll bet it's a fuck of a lot more than the $75.00 an Examiner.com writer can make with that number of page-views.

If I were in the news or magazine publishing business right now, I'd think about going to a paid model for Amazon's Kindle or something similar.

[jody]

5. I wonder how "professional" examiner.com writers are in their work? Who reviews a piece before it is

posted on an examiner.com site?

Bottom line, why should anyone accept any examiner.com piece as other than someone's unsupported assertion, a practice that I and perhaps others infrequently engage with our Internet posts.