A NEW CITY AUDIT shows blogs racing ahead of the mainstream media in stimulating citizen discussion about Portland government.
The Office of Management and Finance commissioned the $2,884 audit from Portland-based digital marketing group White Horse Consulting as part of “Project Refresh,” Mayor Sam Adams’ effort to update the city’s website.
White Horse scanned all social websites around the world for blogs and citizen comments about the City of Portland between May and October 2009. The group searched for references to the word “Portland,” and then one of the following terms: “Bureau,” “City,” “Government,” “Agency,” or “Department.”
THE TOP 10 PORTLAND BLOGS,
according to White Horse. Rankings based on number of posts related to city government from May to October 2009.
3. blogtown.portlandmercury.com
6. bojack.org
References to the Breedlove scandal involving the mayor weren’t deliberately excluded, as it has tended to dominate headlines since the story broke a year ago. But according to the audit, the story didn’t make much of an impact on citizen discussion about city government: Only 10 posts about the Breedlove scandal also included references to the audit team’s city government search terms, says White Horse emerging media specialist Jamie Beckland.
The search terms were worked out with the Office of Management and Finance, with no reference made to the Breedlove scandal, says Beckland.
“The big takeaway, for me, was that social communities allow for a greater range of civic participation than ever before,” Beckland adds.
Seventy-two percent of conversations Portlanders are having online about the city are happening on blogs, according to the audit—while only 16 percent of such conversations are happening in comments to mainstream media articles. According to the report, Portland’s digital engagement also splits along geographic lines, with 40 percent of online conversations referencing Southeast Portland, 30 percent referencing North and Northeast Portland, 17 percent Southwest Portland, and 13 percent Northwest Portland.
Cops and bikes are the major issues of concern, with 36 percent of online conversations referencing the police bureau and 18 percent referencing the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
The report also says citizens don’t distinguish nonprofessional blogs from online mainstream media sources, and that as such, it’s important for the city to “correct factual inaccuracies, and shape the context of a particular scenario where possible.”
For example, the report quotes citizen comments about the 2006 death in police custody of James Chasse, and about photographs of Portland Police Bureau Captain Mark Kruger in Nazi attire. It suggests that the city “broadcast talking points built for the press into social media” to dilute citizen outrage and concern on these issues.
Where possible, the city should use recommendations from citizens on blogs, says the report, and tell citizens that it is doing so. For example, the city could implement one commenter’s idea referenced in the report, to “make a goal to reducing the use of Tasers on persons with mental illness by 50 percent per year for the next five years.”
“When Chasse was killed in 2006, we began to publish whatever came out about the issue on our site, because we were so outraged by that event,” says Roy Silberstein, president of the Mental Health Association of Portland, whose website emerged second on the audit. “We’ve been making sure that the issue was in the media, upon every twist and turn.”
Bikeportland.org Editor Jonathan Maus is thrilled to find the audit ranked his website as the top place for online discussion about city government.
“I want the city knowing that citizens are talking about them on a site that is totally independent,” says Maus. “And I want commenters to know that there are people at the city actually reading their comments.”
Maus cites Bikeportland.org commenters’ response to the October 2007 bike deaths of Tracey Sparling and Brett Jarolimek as influential in bringing about change at the city [“Failure to Yield,” Feature, Nov 1, 2007].
“When those two tragedies happened, the attention and focus on that issue by hundreds of our commenters was so intense that it forced the mayor to get $200,000 to build those bike boxes,” says Maus. “Our commenters built up the pressure on him to just do something, now.”
“We try and listen to the conversations Portlanders are having, wherever they’re having those conversations,” responds Roy Kaufmann, a spokesman for Mayor Adams. “And more and more, those conversations are happening online.”
You can download a copy of the full report HERE
Page 31 is a crack up. Are they suggesting lying to the public?
“However, when police are seen as wrong or over zealous, the
outrage is extreme, and long-lasting
Recommendation: Correct factual inaccuracies, and shape context
of a particular scenario when possible”
But what is the city to do when the comments are correct and true and the police acted inappropriately (as in the example the report cites – The Chasse incident and Kruger’s nazi sympathies). The report just suggest that the city spin the issue. It doesn’t mention that perhaps the City should take action to correct the real problem and explain to the blogging and commenting public how they have corrected a very real problem. It just suggests pointing out when the public is wrong and “shaping” the context.
Great reporting, guys. The world needs more media coverage as clear-eyed as this.
I think the city’s methodology shows an important difference between the audiences cultivated by legacy media and the ones cultivated by new media. The city was scouring the Web for POLICY stories. But any given policy story only appeals to the narrow sliver of audience the policy in question effects.
Now, the policy story matters A LOT to those few people. But legacy media’s distribution costs, which rely on scale, mean that newspapers and TV stations don’t look for content that matters a lot to a few. They have to look for content that matters a little to many. This leads them to POLITICS stories (Breedlove) instead of policy stories.
Therefore, the digital era will usher in the Golden Age of Local Policy Reporting!!! QED.
And seriously, good on the city for being open-minded enough to simply take the journalistic value of Web-only operations as a given.
Thanks for reporting on this, Matt. I second Michael’s comments. I also add some words of caution in stating that mainstream media is flagging.
This report separates “Creators”, the primary sources of news and information, from “critics”, those that express opinions about the content. The audit is focused on measuring the critics, which seem to engage via blogs, but says little about where the original content is reported, save for one sentence:
“news items influence the blogosphere’s coverage of Portland”
Where does the most information about city government originate? This is the true measure of the news media’s effectiveness in terms of its civic role to speak truth to power. Discussions don’t take place without a primary source of information.
I suspect in most cases the conversations happen where the information is reported, but that wasn’t studied in this audit.
to agree with MichaelAndersen and LibbyTucker:
furthermore, it makes sense that a website like “neighborhood notes” draws a bunch of hits about the city’s actions. The day-to-day working of local neighborhood policies (stop signs, zoning permits, etc) are the most likely places for local citizens who don’t otherwise generally care too much about civic policy to directly comment on and critique “city council.” While I’m not criticizing Bike Portland at all, if you have a website who spends that much time writing about city plans for bike lanes, it makes sense that it’ll garner a significant bulk of comments, city-wide, about local government, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that people don’t turn to the Oregonian or even the Mercury et al for coverage of broader issues (sustainability planning, Rose Quarter plans, MLS to PDX, etc.). Portland can be as bike-friendly as it wants, and can have quite a significant interest in how bike plans are crafted now and in the future, but the suggestion that new media websites like bike portland is the number one place for commentary on what city hall is doing ignores the significant concern people have for other issues in this region. What if Portland has a substantial “new media” presence, with blogs (both journalism and old-crank driven) focused on a handful of specialized topics, but doesn’t have any blogs specifically focused on getting jobs in the region or demanding police accountability?
Good points, Libby and Aaron. Libby, very clever observation about that one sentence, I thought.
Aaron, I share your worries that some niches will be well-covered and others will be poorly covered. But you sort of seem to be assuming a static marketplace. If there’s a market for a well-reported blog about police accountability — written by a civil rights lawyer, maybe, as a marketing tactic? — it might appear tomorrow.
Also, I wonder whether you ever read Oregonian stories about either “getting jobs in the region” or police accountability. I know I should. But I never do. To me, those are both spinach stories that I never get around to. I’m glad the O (and the Mercury, and WW, et al) are around to cover them. But I don’t read such pieces when they appear, and their mere existence doesn’t motivate me to consume these outlets’ content or to patronize their advertisers.
Maybe this is a problem. Or maybe the stories don’t do much good anyway, if not enough people like me are reading them. If a story seems like a good idea to have around but doesn’t get read by very many people, I don’t think it’s actually that good of an idea.
Libby, the ability of the marketplace to keep changing also applies to your implication that legacy outlets are probably still digging up most of the facts. (An implication I agree with.) If legacy outlets do keep declining, there’ll be a growing hunger in the media marketplace for facts, and anyone who can find ways to provide them will find it increasingly easy to attract attention.
Okay, now removing my shameless optimism hat.
The city paid a fee for a “consulting agency” to do a search for terms on websites, then called it an “audit” and proclaimed that “blogs are racing ahead of mainstream media”?
Given that the largest blogs are run by media companies, and profound lack of critical thinking in both this article and the city’s “audit”, I’d say the evidence for the opposite is pretty convincing.
And let’s get real–“stimulating discussion” does not equate to critical thinking or “news”–it just equates to software that has a “comment” function.
so how did this become an ONI comment thread? rock on.