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Q and A with Rachel Sterne of GroundReport
Q and A done for the MGP by Philip Michael Rapisardo, student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, April 2009
Giraffe Prospect:
Rachel Sterne
Founder and CEO
Groundreport.com
New York, NY
www.groundreport.com
Where did you grow up? What is your educational background? Where else have you worked?
I grew up in New York, in Brooklyn and Dobbs Ferry, a small town in Westchester. I attended New York University as a Presidential Scholar and received my Bachelor's in History and French. Prior to GroundReport, I worked as a Business Developer for 80-million-user P2P platform LimeWire and as a Political Intern for the US Mission to the United Nations, where I covered the Security Council. I've had a variety of interesting internships, working for a NYC Council Member, an urban marketing firm and the EastWest Institute, a foreign affairs think tank.
When was the idea for groundreport first brought up and who else was involved?
The concept for GroundReport had been brewing since my experience at the United Nations, where I was struck by the great disparity between what is really going on in the world, and what people are aware of. I believed that a better-informed public would influence positive policy changes to address the world's most urgent crises-- like the ongoing conflict in Darfur. But I felt powerless to effect that kind of change.
At LimeWire, I managed web development and discovered these incredible, usable, cheap technologies that people can use to create content and share information. I missed working in the global policy sphere, and remember the exact moment I realized the opportunity to create a news platform powered by people around the world.
Over the next few days I developed the concept of GroundReport. It would be a digital news outlet where anyone can publish articles, videos and photos. The community rates the best stories to determine what makes the front page, and all contributors earn a share of ad revenues based on their traffic.
I seeded it initially by reaching out to 100 friends around the world, and offering $50 to whomever recruited the most writers in one month. That started the whole thing. We were truly bootstrapped. Today we have over 4,000 professional and amateur reporters.
Does groundreport exist beyond the website? Meaning are their any print, broadcast, or other media components?
GroundReport is exclusively a digital platform. However, we have begun exploring video syndication to TV as a result of outside interest.
In your own words, what does groundreport do and why are you doing it? Is there a difference between your personal motivation and the project motivation?
GroundReport democratizes the media. It empowers everyone to participate in the news-gathering, production and dissemination process.
We're also committed to serving the public through the Fourth Estate. GroundReport was founded in 2006, and the past two years have seen the media industry encounter a crisis of enormous proportions. As newspapers and local TV stations shutter across the country, GroundReport is in a position to fill the vaccuum of coverage and information to serve neglected publics.
I launched GroundReport to help people harness their civic agency to change the world, and that remains my motivation to this day.
6. How does groundreport make money? Does it come from direct revenue or donations? Something else?
GroundReport's revenues come from advertising partners including Technorati Media and YouTube.
Did the idea of groundreport come from any other idea or project that you had seen?
No, it was based entirely on my experience at LimeWire and the UN. I never had any interest in working in the media, and was shocked when I discovered there was already something called 'citizen journalism.'
When you decided to launch groundreport, and even now that the site has been running for some time, what are the personal, professional, and financial risks to what you are doing?
That's a complicated question, and all those areas see great risks and rewards simultaneously. Professionally, launching my own company has been an incredible education and immensely valuable--like a practical MBA. Financially, you do take a hit in income and security, but the sacrifice is with the knowledge that you will come out the other side with a valuable asset and as a higher-potential individual.
Personally, there is the most sacrifice, as you relegate social and personal responsibilities to the background in favor of the company. I'm thankful to have a very supportive network around me.
Explain your vision of what it means to foster participatory democracy and community. What does participatory democracy and community mean to you, and how does groundreport help achieve this?
To me, a functioning participatory democracy rests on having an informed public. Today, with the sensationalization of television news and evaporation of print media, this ideal of an informed public is in great peril.
Second, to foster true participation, the community needs to feel its actions will have a tangible, measurable effect. President Obama's campaign mobilized the American public to donate money and volunteer by doing exactly this. Now the media needs to engage the public in a way that goes beyond the superficial. We need to link civic action to civic information.
Hyperlocal media--news reporting by those witnesses events at the scene--helps to achieve both of these ends. On GroundReport we've seen entire local elections play out in passionate editorials, we've watched local historians campaign for new legislation and we've seen victims of domestic crime receive aid and legislative defense after their stories were discovered.
What do you think is right and wrong with our media, our democracy, and journalism? How do we preserve the best and fix the worst?
The news media, especially on television, has become another category of entertainment for public consumption. Meanwhile, print journalism has retrenched itself further in the ivory tower, rejecting the potential of digital technologies and ignoring the paradigm shift in the way people document events, share information and control their own news experiences.
What we need to do now is meet somewhere in the middle, learning lessons in creativity from the TV sector, applying the journalism standards and vetting process of the print sector, and embracing the truly revolutionary tools evolving every day online.
This is GroundReport's focus right now. In line with this, we'll be announcing stricter standards for publication this week, and are looking to bring a few, very bright aspiring digital journalists on board. If you'd like to apply to be an editor, email your background and GroundReport username to info@groundreport.com.