John Temple Responds to Criticism of YourHub.com

John Temple, editor, president, and publisher of Rocky Mountain News, which owns and operates the citizens media site YourHub.com, wrote in response to criticisms levied against the site by E&P columnist Steve Outing. Below is Temple's letter, and a follow-up from the original columnist.

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I think Steve Outing raises good questions in his column, Can 'Citizen Journalists' Really Produce Readable Content?

However it's disappointing to see a major trade publication take such an important question and answer it in such a shallow way.

One would expect a publication on journalism to follow basic accepted journalistic practices, such as doing thorough reporting and seeking response from the people in charge of the operation it criticizes. I think we at the Rocky Mountain News, which produces YourHub.com, have much to share with the industry based on our experience launching the most extensive citizen journalism experiment in a U.S. metropolitan area. It's a shame Editor & Publisher didn't bother to ask what we have learned. However I would hope your readers wouldn't take Mr. Outing's word based on a cursory examination of one of our 42 community Web sites and check them out themselves at YourHub.com.

I have found that traditional journalists find it difficult to accept that a citizen site is going to look and feel different from a traditional news site. It's going to be messy. Mr. Outing is correct that some postings will be of little interest to a wide audience. But what he's missing is that a citizen journalism site is more like a bulletin board at a library or community center than a newspaper. I find myself enjoying looking at those bulletin boards. Of course I'm not wowed by every item on them. But together they give a feeling for a place.

YourHub.com and citizen journalism is a much bigger idea than Mr. Outing suggests. Citizens can post stories, photos, columns, letters, drawings and anything else they can think of. Soon I hope they'll be posting video and audio. But they can also use the site every day to find links to all the news stories about their community, not just stories from the Rocky Mountain News. We truly try to provide people a one-stop site to participate in their community throughout the day. Along that line, we also offer traditional community resource information, such as library hours, hospitals, etc. And, of course, we help buyers and sellers find each other. Mr. Outing may not like the postings of PR people, but last I looked they're still covered by the First Amendment, too. In citizen journalism, we don't say No. We say, Yes! Again, think of the bulletin board.

YourHub.com receives hundreds of postings every week. In addition, people post hundreds of community events every week, as well as free classifieds, etc. I always tell readers not to judge a newspaper by a single edition. I'm surprised that Editor and Publisher wouldn't follow the same maxim. To evaluate the content of a network of 42 Web sites based on a cursory look at one of the sites on a single day does a disservice to your readers.

I think traditional journalists need to be prepared that community news sites will look and feel different from what they're used to. They may think of these sites as "junk." But we receive very positive feedback about our sites and about the 15 community news sections we print weekly based on citizen contributions. We have already redesigned YourHub.com based on user feedback. Why? Because we've learned that what users want is even more ability to connect and communicate. They truly want a community forum. That doesn't look like a traditional newspaper. Instead of thinking of teaching the citizens, news organizations might think of learning from them what they want. That's what we're doing at the Rocky Mountain News with YourHub.com, and a number of other newspapers have already decided to embrace the same effort.

John Temple
Editor, President and Publisher
Rocky Mountain News

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Steve Outing responds to John Temple:

I made an initial attempt to contact Yourhub managing editor Travis Henry while researching this column but we didn't connect, and then I failed to follow up before finishing the article. That was a mistake and I apologize for my oversight.

On the issues that Mr. Temple raises, there's much that I agree with in his letter above. I agree that sites like Yourhub are more in the mode of a community bulletin board than a traditional publication or news Web site. But if that's all it is -- a bulletin board -- then I doubt it will gain much readership. People use bulletin boards when they're looking for something specific or have something to sell or announce; they don't typically spend lots of time there.

My suggestion remains that citJ initiatives like Yourhub work to be destination sites, as well, with a level of quality that will attract repeat visits by readers. That can be achieved by a combination of working to attract quality submissions (and recognizing that lesser quality submissions are valuable, too, and have a place -- but maybe not on the homepage) and using professional editors to highlight and package the best citizen contributions in order to make a readable product. (See Ohmynews as an example.) A system that allows readers to filter citizen news by personal interest (neighborhood I live in, community groups I belong to, schools my kids attend, little league teams my kids play on, etc.) and deliver a personal citizen-news feed to them is also important.

Mr. Temple suggests that I assessed Yourhub with only a look at one section of it. To the contrary, because I live in the Denver/Boulder area, I've spent much time on the site, reviewing content across multiple city/town editions. Indeed, recently I even used Yourhub to place a "citizen obituary" for my father. I have a very good feel for what's there.

Steve Outing

Readers who want to share their thoughts on the grassroots journalism movement are invited to e-mail us at letters@editorandpublisher.com.