YOUR ELI: The Challenges We Face at ELi

Image of "Community" sculpture in Valley Court Park, courtesy of City of East Lansing

This week, along with a donation, one of our readers sent this note:

I think ELi is playing a very important role in catalyzing a more robust, and more democratic, discourse in town. I am grateful to you and all involved for doing what you do.

Feedback like this helps us know we are meeting our mission at ELi—to enhance and improve the sharing of local information among members of the greater East Lansing area, ultimately with the goal of creating better informed and more connected citizens.

But we are learning that this work isn’t easy. ELi faces a number of substantial challenges, and I thought for this week’s Your ELi column, I should share those with you. That way, if—like me—you are becoming addicted to having ELi in your life, you can help us surmount these challenges and keep ELi going into the New Year:

“I can’t be a real reporter”: ELi relies on embedded citizen-reporters to bring their fellow neighbors hyper-local news. One of the challenges about this is getting folks who aren’t journalists by profession to understand that they really should and can be local news reporters. You can see we are making progress in this department, with over three dozen reporters so far. You can help us by encouraging neighbors to tell us about news and to consider themselves becoming reporters of that news. No journalistic experience is required. We provide as much help as needed with meeting ELi’s standards, fact-finding, photography, and editing. And you know what? It’s very satisfying to do this work.

“Embedded citizen-reporters can’t be trusted”: Another challenge to ELi comes from people who say embedded citizen-reporters can’t maintain high journalistic standards of nonpartisanship and non-editorializing. But here’s what we know from doing this work: Yes, just like professional reporters, we at ELi all have personal opinions. But just like professional reporters, we can and must silence them when we come to report the factual news. To maintain our high, board-approved publication standards of accuracy, non-editorializing, nonpartisanship, and clarity, every article goes through a “second set” of eyes by editors charged with standards maintenance. That’s why the writing at ELi is so consistently clear and focused on the facts.

“FOIA it”: We try to bring you what you need to know about what’s going on in City Hall in a timely fashion. That’s not always easy. A recent example involved my trying to verify something that allegedly happened at a public meeting of an East Lansing government committee. I asked the City Planning department how I could arrange to listen to the audio recording made of the meeting so I could do the verification. After days of frustrating delay, I was told I had to ask for it though the Freedom of Information Act, i.e., FOIA. Yes, a recording of a public meeting, and I was told I had to FOIA it. But you know what? When we’re told this, we persist, as I did in that case, and fortunately we have a City Clerk who takes FOIA rights very seriously. By the way, if you become a reporter for us and are told “FOIA it,” we’ll teach you how to FOIA. And you’ll quickly learn why FOIA and news reporting are so important to the democratic process.

“There’s no there there to report”: Some people tell us that East Lansing lacks any “there” there, so that there’s nothing worth reporting. You can see we disagree! Every week we bring you Ann About Town—stories from our Managing Editor capturing the place that is this rather fascinating place. And we bring you news of East Lansing concerts and art shows, including, for example, news about monthly Community Sing. We bring you ELi on Earth, helping you realize the place of East Lansing in our natural world, plus news of East Lansing’s geology, local political protests, and neighborhood activities. ELi marks the places that make East Lansing, and so creates mental maps that turn into the realization that there is a there here.

“It’s too complicated”: A lot of times we hear people tell us that a news story we want to report on is “too complicated” to bring to the average reader in East Lansing. The truth is that East Lansing has a pretty high average IQ, and that a lot of stories can be presented in a way that can bring our average citizen up to speed. ELi’s Managing Editor Ann Nichols and I (as publisher) also feel that there are stories too important not to try to translate, even if they are complicated. Want some good examples? Check out our stories on the ELPS teacher contract negotiations, the talks between landlords and homeowners in rental neighborhoods, and the recent meteor shower. At ELi, our attitude is that if an East Lansing story is worth reporting, it’s worth taking the time to understand it and to figure out how to explain it clearly to the people of East Lansing.

“News should be free…”: The board of ELi believes firmly that all the people of East Lansing should have equal, unhindered, unmonitored access to local news. That’s why you’ll never find any requirement at ELi to pay, to subscribe, or to give away your information. We don’t mark you with cookies, charge you, or ask you to fill out any registration forms. ELi is designed to be a completely safe space and completely open place for getting news about East Lansing.

“…so ELi shouldn’t need money”: With that we must disagree. Bringing you the news as we do requires funding of the nonprofit organization that is ELi. We have to pay to maintain and grow a website that is noncommercial and not dependent on any service that collects your personal information. We have to pay editors to ensure that they can work for us. The same is true for many reporters, including young people growing their resumes and folks on limited incomes. We don’t need a ton of money to do this—only about $25,000/year under our current model—but we do need local financial support from readers like you if ELi is going to make it. Right now, it’s tight.

So what’s the biggest challenge? I would say it’s getting people to realize what I came to realize working in my own field (medical history and patient advocacy)—that the Internet has caused tremendous negative pressure on traditional news reporting, including especially investigative journalism and local news reporting—and that in order to preserve robust democratic systems, we have to have good journalism. Sometimes that means doing it ourselves under a radical nonprofit model, similar to organizations like Pro Publica. That’s what motivated me to found ELi and what motivates me to give about 40 hours a week free labor to it, plus enough in financial donations to launch it with my fellow founding supporters.

Think ELi isn’t important to East Lansing’s well-being? Um, then why are you here?

If you think it is important, think about how you can help. We can’t do this without a broad base of support.

ELi is a reader-supported, nonprofit, noncommercial news source of, by, and for the people of East Lansing. If you want us to keep our public service going, contribute now! Donate online or donate by check. We are an IRS-registered 501c3 nonprofit, which means your 2014 contributions are tax deductible for 2014!

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