Will magazines' fancy paper tricks come back to bite them in the end? Photo by Flickr user epSos.de.

I recently read this magazine “print gimmicks” story from Folio:

“In this era, when everyone’s excited about new media, we need to do everything we can to make older media as exciting as possible,” says Granger, Esquire’s editor-in-chief. The magazine’s latest print gimmick was its May 2009 issue where it featured a mix-n-match cover. The facial features of President Obama, George Clooney and Justin Timberlake became interchangeable thanks to a tri-perforated cover.

The article also mentions 3-D covers from The Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone, pop-ups and bar codes in Hearst magazines, and innovative advertising inserts that try to catch readers’ attention. It describes the additional time it takes to plan and create these print “gimmicks,” as well as the additional cost for special inks, papers, and printing and folding techniques.

While it’s clever to come up with new ways to play with paper, I think these gimmicks are a misuse of magazines’ time and resources. You might gather a few more readers who pick up the magazine to play with its mix-and-match cover, or a few nerdy types (um, like me) who want to see how those barcodes work. (Hint: I never got around to doing anything with them.)

Ultimately, these gimmicks distract from what makes magazines special: the unique topic and voice of editorial content in the magazine, and the community that readers feel around that content.

I don’t think readers who might buy the magazine for these “gimmicks” are the long-term readers and subscribers magazines really need. Those aren’t the readers who identify with the magazine’s content in a deep and substantial way, who find a part of their own identity in the work of the writers, editors, photographers and artists in a magazine’s pages. Moreover, long-term readers of a magazine aren’t getting much added value with these techniques; if anything, they could be perceived as an unnecessary distraction.

My feeling is that if a magazine wants to secure a steady readership for its print edition – and for its brand, wherever it ultimately goes, online or off – it must invest in quality content, not meaningless and superficial tricks with paper that don’t connect with readers on a deeper level. The magazines that make that investment are the ones I want to keep reading and the ones that earn my loyalty.

One well-known crowdfunding project for journalism is Spot.Us. This organization provides a platform for public donations to proposed stories in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Potential donors can read a pitch for the story, follow the reporter’s blog and see other content related to the proposed story.

I’m afraid, though, that it’s a bit optimistic to expect the audience to evaluate, donate to, and follow up on stories at the international, national, state and local levels, as would really be needed to make this model widespread and effective throughout journalism. Not only is it a financial commitment, but it’s also a time commitment that goes beyond what most people will consider for news. I doubt most people will make this investment in news, especially given current levels of public appreciation for journalism.

It seems to me that if this model is to succeed, it needs to look at another model of investments that has been very successful: the mutual fund. As I see it, today’s crowdfunding possibilities – limited as they are – are like individual stock investments, with a “socially responsible investing” angle. A donor chooses to donate to X story because he or she feels that it has long-term value for a personal information “portfolio” and for a community.

But just like investing in individual stocks, picking those stories is a lot of work. People like mutual funds for their financial investments because they eliminate that detailed effort. In a mutual fund, a trusted manager with a proven track record is given funds to allocate based on a chosen model of investment. Many different mutual funds exist: some that are more risky, some that are less so, some that invest in particular industries and some that express particular ideological perspectives.

Maybe this is how crowdfunding could be approached – as a news mutual fund, rather than as a stock-picking process. Spot.Us does provide an option to simply donate money and allow the organization to choose where the funds are assigned. But little transparency is provided – as far as I can tell – as to how that selection is made.

In a news mutual fund, a manager would determine where news investors’ money was directed according to defined story selection parameters.

Sound like an editor? Does a news mutual fund sound a bit like buying a newspaper subscription and hoping your money goes to the “right” stories? Sure.

But most of the audience doesn’t know how editors select stories, and they have never had any input into that process. A more open “news mutual fund” process would lead to greater credibility and audience engagement, while eliminating the detail work on the audience’s behalf of doing the story selection work themselves. It would also maintain a degree of audience accountability for the manager, because if stories began to deviate from the investors’ chosen parameters, they could redirect their money to a different news fund.

I’m sure there are weaknesses to this model as well, just as there are in mutual fund investing, so the option to invest in individual stories – some of which could be collaborations among news producers – should still be available.

In a post on MediaShift, Spot.Us founder David Cohn noted that the site was able to fully fund a project that did not yet have a reporter assigned to it, meaning that the site’s managers developed the idea and then, once it was funded, could hire a freelancer to work on it. He says that the logistics of this process are much easier for the site, and also open up the chance to market the story to traditional news organizations that could reimburse Spot.Us its funding in exchange for first publication rights to the story. So here’s a case where Spot.Us could operate like the news mutual fund manager that I’m envisioning here. They control the funds and their allocation, and have already told the audience how this money will be spent. The development of the story, its assignment and its distribution would ideally be equally transparent through updates provided on the site.

The crowdfunding model for journalism is still in its early days, and there will no doubt be lots of experimentation. Testing the public’s willingness to invest in news is a daunting (and somewhat frightening) task, but with a variety of approaches, it might turn out to be an exciting and engaging process for journalists and the audience both.

While the innovations being discussed at ONA are amazing and important to the future of the journalism profession, I am concerned that communities like mine will struggle to benefit from them in the near future.

Welcome to the information...road. Photo by Flickr user Christian Terboven.

Some recent examples of innovative tech projects aimed at increasing the public’s engagement with news have included The Rapidian, a citizen journalism site in Grand Rapids, Mich., which received Knight Foundation funding and sleekly serves up hyperlocal news. I also downloaded the Fwix citizen journalism iPhone app, which is pretty cool, and have been on the lookout for other developments in citizen journalism and community information access.

However, it seems like the underlying assumption in many of these projects so far has been that if you build it, the participants will come. As long as the project uses the most up-to-date technology, provides near-immediate coverage of events and integrates numerous interactive opportunities, then it is assumed that it will gain community involvement and support (even as everyone acknowledges the financial details remain TBD).

What’s even better? If the project incorporates Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth and an iPhone app, of course.

But what if you build all that, and no one comes? It all sounds great, but without community access to (and enthusiasm for, and knowledge about) the use of this technology, these projects won’t go very far – and could even inadvertently damage communities by reinforcing class differences in political participation, giving people who already have a strong voice an even bigger microphone.

I’m thinking of the challenges faced in my city: Fresno, Calif. My campus was visited Wednesday by columnist Mike Osegueda of the Fresno Bee, who discussed the paper’s efforts to use social media, including citizen journalism, blogs and so forth. It’s been difficult to build those efforts, he said, partly because of the relatively small proportion of people in this region who regularly use computers and the Internet. Participation is low. It appears that the hard copy of the newspaper (though shrinking) – along with broadcast media – is still a primary way that people here engage with community issues.

Curious about his statements, I looked for some statistical data on Internet use in California’s Central Valley. As a new resident of this area, I didn’t know that there’s actually about a decade of research that documents a significant digital divide between this region of California and the rest of the state.

A June 2009 report (PDF) by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, shows that – remarkably – both Internet use and home broadband access actually declined from 2008 to 2009 in the Central Valley.

The Valley is the only region of California that showed decreases in these areas in the last year. It is also the lowest-ranked region of the state in both categories. The Bay Area leads the state in broadband access, found in 73 percent of those survey respondents’ homes; only 51 percent of those surveyed in the Valley have broadband at home, lagging well behind the national adoption rate of 63 percent. In the Bay Area, 86 percent of survey respondents “ever” use the Internet; only 67 percent in the Valley ever do. Ever. For anything, at any interval.

I’m not trying to disparage the Valley by pointing out these data. In reality, these findings are pretty much consistent with the urban/rural digital divide observed nationwide; much of the Valley is rural. Broadband access is notoriously difficult to come by in rural areas, especially at an affordable price. The decline in Internet use and home broadband access, moreover, could be attributed to the housing crisis and general economic decline, both of which have hit the Valley hard.

I think these data demonstrate, though, that the latest and greatest digital communication technologies simply aren’t going to be the best option for the struggles of every community. It’s easy for those of us in this field – inundated by tweets, aspiring to Google Wave invitations – to start to think: “If only we could get everyone a laptop, wifi and an iPhone, this town would be a better place! They’d tweet news about their neighborhoods! They’d send graffiti reports to City Hall!” I feel sometimes that I run the risk of isolating myself in a happy little bubble of early adopters who just aren’t representative of the public at large.

For many communities, communication solutions other than those at the pinnacle of innovation still need to be identified and implemented. The lack of funding for technological innovations is often a problem, but the lack of a well-equipped audience to participate in them is an even tougher issue. Existing or reconfigured newspapers and broadcast media can’t be left out of the mix entirely, though many of the leaders in communication innovations seem to have already left them for dead and moved on to more technologically sophisticated options. Consider: actual paper may still need to be involved in solutions for these communities – at least in the near future.

When we do build high-tech communication tools in communities, the means of accessing them have to be there – which include low-cost broadband access and mobile technology, education of the public in their use (inside and outside schools), and governance that is open and responsive to citizen participation.* Otherwise, these technologies are likely simply to perpetuate the class distinctions that already characterize public participation in local politics. A recent Pew report describes the demographics of online and offline political activities among Americans; you can probably guess who participates most in local politics.

I love the newest iPhone apps as much as the next tech-savvy soul, and we certainly shouldn’t stop thinking about tools for a future where everyone can carry a smartphone and be skilled in digital technology. But for many communities today, it’s going to take something other than, or in addition to, great tech to enable communication that can resolve local issues.

* Coincidentally, the Knight Foundation released a report today (link to PDF brochure of conclusions/recommendations) that reinforces some of the statements I’m making here. Its emphasis on the need to make digital and media literacy training available to both youth and adults, along with widespread broadband access, is intended to prevent the formation of a “second class” of citizens without this information and the capacity for engagement. I haven’t read the full report yet, but am anxious to see if it offers practical solutions for different types of communities with diverse technology and communication capabilities.