The Kansas Reflector staff, from left: Reporter Noah Taborda, opinion editor C.J. Janovy, senior reporter Tim Carpenter, editor in chief Sherman Smith. (Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)
Late last year, the publisher called me out of my bunker in the bowels of the Statehouse and into a meeting in his office to scrutinize our plans for publishing an in-depth investigative story.
I was a Statehouse reporter for the Gannett newspapers in Kansas at the time, although I still carried the “managing editor” title. From 2011-2018, I had oversight of the award-winning digital operations at The Topeka Capital-Journal. I understood that our best play for audience was to publish a story late Sunday so that it made a splash first thing Monday morning, when website traffic peaks.
The publisher had a different objective. He wanted our best story to go into the Sunday newspaper, where the company stands to make the most money. He explained to me that a handful of over-the-counter sales of the Sunday paper — with it’s $3 price tag and premium advertising rates — would be far more lucrative to the company than any amount of online traffic.
He made it clear to me during our conversation that even the addition of a million pageviews per day would never generate enough revenue to pay for our newsroom salaries, and that he expected the newspaper to print just once per week within five years. We’ve already seen other newspapers, including the Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle, reduce the number of days it prints each week. The writing was on the wall: Sometime within the next five years, my job and the jobs of most of my colleagues wouldn’t exist.
I walked away from that meeting thinking, five years from now, I’m not going to look back and say, “I sure am glad I made a little bit more profit for some investors in New Jersey.” I wanted to look back and think about the stories that made a difference, how I comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable, and the stories that would have gone untold if I hadn’t pursued them.
As I wrote in my introductory column for the Kansas Reflector, “I’m not the kind of journalist who writes stories so I can read them alone in the closet at night and tell myself how important I am. I write stories for others to read.”
When COVID-19 arrived in Kansas in early March, I began working around the clock, seven days a week, to document every development and the pandemic’s impact in Kansas. Readership spiked. The business reality intervened. Starting in April, most of the Gannett work force began taking turns with one-week unpaid furloughs every month for three months.
This turned out to be a blessing for me. During my forced vacation in April, a friend put me in touch with States Newsroom, a nonprofit that is working to restore depleted ranks of journalists covering state government. They were looking to open a Kansas bureau. I quit my job at The Capital-Journal, where I had been for 16 years, to launch a nonprofit news operation — my dream job.
I got lucky. I didn’t have to go raise startup funds. And I convinced a couple of the best journalists in the Midwest to join me.
We are focused on blending daily government and political coverage with more in-depth stories, insightful opinions and a weekly podcast. All of our stories are free to read, without advertising, and also free for other news media to re-publish.
This is a volatile time for the news industry. We don’t know what model will survive and thrive, but the early indication is that Kansas Reflector will be a dominant force in Kansas reporting for the foreseeable future.
And five years from now, I will be proud of the work I’ve done.
Sherman,
It was great to hear from you in our class meeting. How do you see your non-profit organization growing in Kansas in the near future?
My second question for you, is what is your favorite part about your job? What is that gets you up in the morning and excited about going to work?
Hi, Jace! Thanks for the questions. The goal right now is to grow our reach and influence in the state, which we can do by writing more stories that impact different communities and that are written from the perspective of everyday people. I have been pleased with our initial audience size, considering we just launched in July, and am optimistic about how far we can grow from here. I’ve always looked to analytics to measure and guide decisions.
I love telling news stories of public interest, especially the ones that otherwise wouldn’t be told. I will continue to do that until someone takes my pen and notepad away.
Hey there it is good to hear that you are doing well with your company this far in currents events. How are you handling during this Covid pandemic while working?
Where do you get your connections to making a story of your company? Is by friends, fellow companies, or a mix of both?
I have encouraged staff to work from home when they can, and to be safe when they are in the field. I generally go into the office 2-3 times per week, and have covered live events and news conferences. As a journalist, I feel like I was made for these times — reporting important public information during a historic moment in history.
I’m not sure I understand your question about connections. If you are asking about how we find sources for stories, I can emphasize enough the importance of building relationships.
Hello there, Mr. Smith!
Thank you for sharing your time and knowledge with us!
Do you have any thoughts on what you feel are the biggest threats to journalism today? Also, do you have any nuggets of advice for younger generations seeking a career in this field?
Hi, Nevin. I think the biggest challenge we have is re-educating the public about what we do and why we do it — something journalists don’t do well. There are numerous surveys now that indicate a growing portion of the public can’t tell the difference between news and opinion and when they read it online. The inability to distinguish between a news story and partisan attack undermines our credibility.
My best advice is to read a lot. Read what other reporters, experienced and inexperienced are writing — the types of stories, who their sources are, how the stories are structured, what is the lede, which quotes did they use and where are they placed in the story. Any time you are covering something with other reporters, make sure you look at how they covered it, too.
Hey Sherman,
After reading your words, I really admire your enthusiasm for your work and your responsibility for your readers. It seems that my classmates have raised some good and profound questions, so I would like to ask you that you like to write stories for others to read, and I think there may be more news stories than usual during the epidemic. Do you have any touching or unforgettable stories to share with us?
Thank you so much for this question. One of my favorite stories is one that isn’t even particularly well written (I was tired), but it’s my favorite for two reasons: I put effort into a story when I didn’t have to, and it led me to a conversation with someone who said something incredibly touching.
Every year toward the end of the Legislative session, there is a mournful celebration on behalf of fallen law enforcement officers. In 2018, because of an unexpectedly shortened legislative schedule, this fell on the last day of the session. I had been up until something like 3 a.m. the night before covering a lengthy tax debate in the Senate.
I came into work that last day completely exhausted, like all the other reporters. The police memorial is the sort of thing where the governor, AG and a couple of others give a short speech in the rotunda of the Statehouse, and then there’s a procession to a memorial on the Statehouse lawn with a lot of pageantry. Generally, you write down something the governor says and go file a short story. Don’t invest more than a half-hour of your time because nobody reads these stories, and there are more important things to do. Some of the Statehouse reporters don’t even bother to write the brief.
Nobody told me what I should or shouldn’t write that day. I just decided I was going to try to write a good story. As a journalist, one of your primary responsibilities is to find something interesting about your topic at hand. That doesn’t mean you have to be more perceptive than everybody else. It means you have to work at it. When I’ve covered things like the Christmas tree delivery at the governor’s mansion, I’ve gone into the horse trailers to find out the names and breeds of the horses (they are Percherons) just to get some flavorful details. Last year, I interviewed Santa Claus about what children could do in the final month before Christmas to turn their fortunes around. One year, just by talking to people in the crowd, I discovered that the person who made the wreath on the governor’s door had died unexpectedly shortly before it was delivered, and his apprentice was there to carry on his legacy. It helps to be a curious person.
For the story on fallen officers, I decided I would downplay the speeches inside and go talk to the people who were gathered around the memorial after the procession. That’s where I met a police officer from Mission whose husband-to-be, also an officer, had been killed in the line of duty while she was pregnant.
I remember asking her about how it felt when she put on her uniform every day to know there were people who would want to harm her simply for wearing it. She nervously laughed, and joked about how people want to harm journalists, too. But it’s not the same thing, I told her. Nobody has ever shot at me for writing a story. (Knock on wood.) People shoot at police all the time.
She reflected for a moment, and gave me a candid answer.
“If you sit there and worry if this is going to be the last call I run, is this going to be the last car stop I do, is this going to be the last time I get to kiss my family goodbye, you’re going to drive yourself insane,” she said. “Is there always that chance? Absolutely. But I think everybody who puts on the badge and puts on the belt every day, they weigh that and they figure if it is, better me than someone else.”
Here’s what she was trying to tell me: If one of us has to die, I’d rather it was me than you.
https://www.cjonline.com/news/20180504/better-me-than-someone-else-for-police-officers-risk-of-sacrifice-is-part-of-calling
Hey Mr. Smith, I enjoyed listening to you and obtaining some important knowledge. I think that your journey to your dream job is amazing and very motivational. What made you decide that this was what you wanted to do for the rest of your life?
My 2nd question is do you regret not quitting your job and starting your non-profit earlier?
There were several factors that influenced my decision to take advantage of this opportunity. I wanted to have more freedom as I pursued compelling news stories of public interest, and loved the idea of building an operation from scratch to make the best use of available resources. I had thought about doing this for a long time, but didn’t have the financial resources to do it on my own. I am grateful for the opportunity provided by States Newsroom.
Hi Mr. Smith!
Thank you for taking the time to share with us! Your story about your journey is very inspiring. What inspired you to pursue journalism? Also, what kind of obstacles did you run into while trying to launch a non-profit organization amid a pandemic?
One of my high school teachers made us do the thing where you pick a profession and turn in a research paper on it. I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I remember thinking, what’s a practical way to make a living as a writer? Newspaper reporter seemed like a safer bet than novels or songs.
When I think about the big newsworthy moments of my childhood, I think about teachers who gathered the class around a TV — the bombing of the World Trade Centers, Ruby Ridge, Waco, O.J., Oklahoma City, Columbine — and the feeling of urgency and wanting to understand what happened. My mother tells a story about being baffled when I requested a subscription to Newsweek as a middle schooler. As a member of the quiz bowl team, I shined in current events. I lived in a rural area, so I rode the bus to school and always arrived early; for me, that meant spending time in the library reading the newspapers before class, a habit I continued after I began driving to high school. So it was natural that journalism came to mind when I first thought about what I wanted to do.
As for the nonprofit, I feel like all the stars aligned for me at just the right time. The pandemic and election proved to be good runways for attracting a large audience almost immediately, and it helped to have some well-known names on board. I will always be grateful for States Newsroom for providing the support that makes all of this possible.
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