Five Questions With: Joanna Detz

"As a media organization that started with absolutely no seed money in a down economy, the last five years have been financially challenging."

Frank Carini and Joanna Detz launched ecoRI News, a nonprofit online environmental media organization, in 2009. Sept. 21 marked five years since ecoRI News launched its website and sent out its first e-newsletter.
Detz spoke with Providence Business News about the past five years and her vision for ecoRI News going forward

PBN: Why did you want to launch ecoRI News?
DETZ:
Frank Carini (my husband) and I launched ecoRI News in 2009 because we believed environmental issues were receiving scant coverage in mainstream media. The health of the environment is inextricably linked to the health of the local economy and to the physical health and well-being of all of us who live here. ecoRI News strives, through its reporting, to educate the public (both citizens and policymakers) about the environmental challenges and opportunities our region faces.

PBN: The newspaper industry has been battered by staff cuts, revenue declines – were you concerned that you wouldn’t be able to make this work and how have you overcome industry problems (fewer advertising dollars, etc.)?
DETZ:
Absolutely. Frank worked more than 17 years in the newspaper business – both as a reporter and an editor – before we launched ecoRI News, so he had witnessed these industry challenges firsthand. But I think our advantage comes with our size (small), newness (digital) and our willingness to try new things (fearlessness). Our operation doesn’t have much overhead. Unlike a newspaper, we don’t have to cover the costs of a print edition or pay overhead for some cavernous office space. We also decided to incorporate as a nonprofit, which opens up the door for donations and grant funding as a revenue stream. But, even as a nonprofit, we still must run ecoRI News as a business. Grants are hit or miss, and they typically don’t cover general operating expenses, so we must focus on sustainable revenue streams such as donors, advertisers and sponsorships.
And we’ve experimented with non-traditional (for media) revenue streams. For example, we’re probably the only media organization that started a residential compost-collection program to fund our journalism. Let me back up. We have an outreach arm that is separate from our news operation that runs educational programs and community service efforts. In June 2013, that outreach arm launched a fee-based residential compost-collection program in Pawtucket and Providence. People pay a monthly fee for our program employees to pick up their food scraps (which they collect in a 5-gallon pail on their porch) and deliver them to local farms where they are composted and used to grow more food. The collection fees cover the cost of running the compost program and the leftover money flows back to ecoRI News to support our journalism. I like the fact that we are muckrakers in the figurative and literal sense.

PBN: How would you describe the last five years? What are some of the challenges of running an e-newsletter? What about unexpected surprises?
DETZ:
As a media organization that started with absolutely no seed money in a down economy, the last five years have been financially challenging. Many of us, myself included, work a second job – I’m a freelance graphic designer – to supplement our modest ecoRI News salaries. By far, our greatest asset is our hardworking staff who are paid below their market value and work so hard to make this organization successful.
Our weekly e-newsletter is our signature publication and the main driver of traffic to our website. But we also drive traffic to stories through our social media networks (Twitter and Facebook). As an electronic publication, it’s hard to stand out from all the other digital chatter and inbox clutter. In order to do so, we’ve had to build a strong and trusted brand and do real-world outreach. We get most of our e-newsletter subscribers by tabling at events and signing them up directly via face-to-face interaction. It has been important for us as a new media organization to build real-world relationships with our readers. We’ve been surprised and humbled by the generosity of folks we’ve never even met who don’t have a lot to give but who support what we do.

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PBN: What story are you most proud of doing/running in the e-newsletter? What piece generated the most feedback? Has any of your material been picked up by other news outlets?
DETZ:
I can’t think of any one single story offhand. I’m most proud of our continued coverage of issues such as: the shrinking space in Rhode Island’s Central Landfill, environmental legislation and challenges posed by climate change. By continuing to watchdog issues like these, we are creating broad awareness among citizens about the challenges we’re facing. We’ve also featured some folks who are quietly doing some really great work in areas of farming, habitat preservation, aquaculture and energy innovation. By broadcasting their stories, we’re helping connect these people in the environmental sector to the average citizens who read our news stories. Our stories have been picked up by local papers like The Fall River Herald, The Westerly Sun, The Providence Journal (opinion page). We were also featured in the The Columbia Journalism Review in a story titled, “Married with Websites.”

PBN: Where do you see ecoRI News in five years? How many employees, contributing writers, photographers do you have now? Is the plan to expand eventually?
DETZ:
I’d like to see ecoRI News more than double its revenue so that it can pay its current staff of four what they are worth. If we can achieve this revenue goal, I can see potentially adding maybe two more staffers. Currently we have three full-time employees and one part-time employee. In addition, we have about 12 active contributing writers and photographers. I don’t think we’d ever expand our coverage area beyond southern New England, but we’d certainly like to deepen our coverage by reporting more stories and adding more video content. But, again, those objectives are linked to revenue. In five years, I’d like ecoRI News to be recognized as the “online paper of record” for environmental news in southern New England, with mainstream media outlets using us as a wire service for content.

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