Does ELi Do Any Good?

Above: East Lansing’s snow and ice management team; read about them.

A couple of months ago, ELi’s Managing Editor Ann Nichols and I hopped on an Amtrak train and went to Chicago together. No, we weren’t absconding with your donations for a weekend of partying. We went to attend the annual meeting of LION Publishers – Local Independent Online News Publishers – a trip made possible in part by a $250 travel grant from LION.

Most of the other publishers we met there were running operations different from ours. Most were for-profit enterprises run by professional journalists, many of whom had lost their jobs in the great wave of lay-offs still happening nationwide at local newspapers like the Lansing State Journal. Only a few LION-member operations were non-profit public service organizations like ELi, and so far as we could tell, we were the only non-profit using a citizen-reporter approach, producing on a shoestring budget. Folks there were amazed at what we produce on only $45,000/year.

As I suspected, what we’re doing at ELi is kind of radical. I continue to think ELi may turn out to be an early model for a coming nationwide revolution in local news—one that will be a response to the destruction of local news in the last twenty years. People are waking up to the dangers of news-less (or, worse, fake news) social and political environments. That said, as we’ve made plain, even ELi is at a critical moment of “sustainability-or-bust.”

One of the things we learned at LION is the importance of tracking our impact. Doing so not only helps us understand how we matter and helps buoy us when we’re tired, it also helps show our financials supporters that they matter.

The thing about being in a small city, though—especially a small Midwestern city where you live and report for a nonpartisan, non-editorial news service—is that you have to be careful how you talk about your impact.

When the most influential and most powerful people in town tell you that your organization has changed the whole scene—that you’ve made citizens ask harder questions much more often; that you’ve woken people up to major issues like local government debt and crime patterns; that you’ve given people a place to feel heard as they fight against powerful entities—you can’t just quote those powerful and influential people. They don’t want to be seen as praising a service that some of the people they have to work with sincerely wish would go away.

But there are some important names I can name for you as evidencing our impact. First, a little background:

When ELi first started, our tech manager Lisa Lees looked at the IP addresses of site visitors, to see who was looking at ELi. She told me we had one place in town that was lighting up our readership map: City Hall. I laughed. I said that if that was all we accomplished—letting City Hall know we were watching and reporting—that would make me happy.

But we’ve actually come a really long way since that time many years ago. ELi now has about 15,000 visitors a month, from all over the city, and more and more from Haslett, Okemos, and Lansing. We even have donors in far-flung places like San Francisco because they grew up here and really appreciate what we’re doing for their hometown.

Moreover, people in City Hall now actively work with us. Mikell Frey from the City’s communications department helps us figure out who we need to talk to about a story, and helps us get photos and maps and other documents. City Clerk Marie Wicks deals with our FOIAs and actively turns to ELi to push out the word about voter precinct changes and needing more election inspectors. Cathy DeShambo in Public Works answers our many questions about recycling and trash and deer, while City Engineer Bob Scheuerman bravely takes all our questions about water.

Police Chief Jeff Murphy consistently helps us get answers to our questions about crime and policing. Right now, City Finance Director Mary Haskell is helping me with a story explaining the City’s current debt, following up on a story she helped us with two years ago, and Planning Director Tim Dempsey just answered a question for us that a reader had about lighting code at construction sites.

I’m really proud of the relationships that we’ve built up with all those people who work for our City. Team ELi has worked really hard to make these connections happen, through our fair and accurate reporting. (City staff know we don’t play “gotcha.”) I’m also proud that we’ve helped East Lansing citizens get to know the people who work for them—and to know how hard many of our City employees work for the people of this city. To me, this is major evidence of the impact of ELi’s consistently good work.

And it’s just going to kill me to throw that all away if it turns out ELi is not sustainable.

You know what? When I think about that possibility—of ELi dying from lack of financial support—I think about the ELi donor-reader who wrote to me a few months ago about how the City keeps tearing up his lawn when Pubic Works drivers plow the public sidewalk along his property. With the donor-reader’s permission, I looped in our contacts in the Department of Public Works, and they got in dialogue with him about how to stop this problem from recurring.

Maybe that—a guy’s lawn edge being torn up—seems trivial to you as our City faces about $200 million in debt, environmental pressures, aging infrastructure, educational underfunding by the State, and so many other big problems. But to me, that guy’s frustration with the plow is not trivial. Local is where you live, and local includes the little problems as well as the big.

When I think about ELi’s impact, I don’t just think about how voting rates are up in local elections, or about how we were the only news organization providing extensive coverage of the recent ELPS School Board race, thanks to Karessa Wheeler and to Ann. I really do think about that guy’s lawn.

I think about the men and women who have thanked us for reporting on their personal local struggles, who have told us that without ELi, no one would have understood what they were facing. I think about the mail I got this week from Okemos on our Costco story, saying how Meridian Township residents wish there was an ELi for them. I think about the woman who wrote this week to ask to be connected with Richard Crittenden, because BWL is coming for her trees and she wants to know her rights.

And I think about the notes we’ve been getting with donations in the last week: “Keep up the terrific reporting!” “We are so grateful for ELi’s service!” “I’m bugging my neighbors to donate to you.”

I just hope more people can see how life with ELi is so much better functioning than life without. I think if we must go without, then, like me, many of you will realize the enormity of what we’ve lost. Yeah, I’ll have a lot more free time. I could use that. But that’s not really the outcome I want.

The impact that matters to us is immaterial. But without material support, the fact is, the impact from ELi that really matters will cease. Money matters to this service.

Want to join me in being a dedicated financial supporter to ELi? Go here.