“When we first started telling people about the site at Rotary Clubs, they worried, ‘what’s to keep folks from posting naked pictures?’” says Graham Osteen, Publisher of the twice-weekly Hartsville Messenger. “But nothing lewd has happened. It’s served its purpose until now, as a way for the community to communicate and share.”
And share they have. Community contributors to Hartsville Today (HVTD) have even created some of the site’s most popular features, like a Pet of the Week page and weekly best-sellers list from the local bookstore. Photo galleries, especially citizen posts of old photos and postcards of historic Hartsville, give the site a hometown feel.
Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina School of Journalism, the academic partner in HVTD, says a recent posting inquiring about a shrine to a deceased resident best “represents the soul of the site.”
Regular posts by a paid stringer during the two-year grant period were important in keeping the conversation local, lively and relevant to readers’ lives. That woman, although no longer paid, remains a valued, regular contributor to the site who has encouraged others, such as “Sandy Sue,” to become regular contributor as well. When “Sandy Sue” recently challenged the cleanliness at the new Pizza Hut, she generated more than 150 posts in response. Osteen says that situation got a little dicey since Pizza Hut is an advertiser for the newspaper. “An editor got a call from a district manager, but he told them to go in and post their own comment.”
Osteen says Hartsville Today also breaks some news, including game summaries of Friday night high school football scores, which people rely on since the print newspaper isn’t published on Saturday.
One challenge has been getting the newsroom to integrate HVTD into its routine. “But now,” says Fisher, “reporters say they check it fairly regularly, and they have gotten stories and story ideas out of it.” The print newspaper also reverse publishes some of the copy from the website in its Monday edition.
The site has strengthened people’s connection to their local paper and the community. “People tell us they come to HVTD for news they don’t get in the paper,” says Fisher, “And they use it to give feedback to the paper.” Fisher pointed to a recent example where readers complained about front-page crime coverage.
The founders acknowledge the site itself hasn’t brought in much advertising. Fisher suggests that sales staff are concerned that selling ads for the site might hurt the legacy newspaper. Osteen admits, “When you have sales reps who get commission on print, they aren’t going to beat the drum on the website,” although he says the paper is starting to offer combos. And while the newspaper’s market territory is the whole county, Fisher says one saleswoman told him that trying to sell HVTD outside of Hartsville is difficult because people don’t see it as being from their town. “That’s good, actually, because it means it has a strong community identity. But it does pose a challenge for sales staffs whose territory is wider than that.” Fisher calls this a “hyperlocal conundrum” for existing media operations that have relied on a wider base for revenue.
Fisher says that despite these challenges, it’s been gratifying to see that readers care deeply about the site, making it their home page, and posting positive and negative comments freely. “They appear to have a sense of pride and ownership in the site and they complain when it seems dull. One community member wrote, ‘What happened? This site used to be an interesting and lively exchange of views and opinions but lately it just reads like a boring episode of ‘Leave it to Beaver.’”
Fisher says periodically there are rumors the paper will be sold, and “almost immediately come the ‘I hope they don’t shut down this site’ messages.”
As a result, Fisher says they’ve learned a lot about moderating community conversation: “No matter what you do, someone will be mad, so the best thing is to be transparent and if you sense hurt feelings try to assuage them back channel. We’ve learned to try to give people a second chance, but not get into an extended debate with them.”
Fisher says the one big disappointment is that HVTD hasn’t attracted significant participation from minority communities.
As the academic arm of this partnership, Fisher says he plans to continue to work with newspaper staff to help them introduce the idea of user-generated content into their workflow. He plans to work with sales staff to get more ads on the site and to overcome the barriers to selling digital. And, of course, continue research into various aspects of the project, especially evidence of community building.
The Hartsville Today Cookbook (PDF) has been downloaded 20,000 times.
According to Fisher, the number of hits peaked during the summer at more than 40,000 a month.
