THE BORDER REPORT
As you've plainly been able to see, I've pulled back on BorderReporter throughout much of the past two months. There's a few reasons for this, some good, some not so much. No, I'm not asking you for money, relax.
I started this Web site about four years ago now because I'd left the world of daily newspaper reporting to work on my own projects but wanted to continue writing about the border. The dynamics of the drug trade fascinated me and even then, before the border exploded, back when Nuevo Laredo and Acapulco were the principal flashpoints, I'd sensed that this was a place I wanted to keep writing about.
That hasn't changed. What has changed is the reality of maintaining a news Web site in an economic climate that has decimated journalism and kept my freelancing and field producing employments at a minimum. You'll allow me to elaborate, and, as usual, to raise some questions. That's what we do best here, you and I, we ask questions and look for answers; it's inherently far more honest to say, "I don't know," than it is to come up with some fool's notion of an answer.
Border reporting is not cheap; unlike most beats, the border is a scattered divergence, with miles in between cities. This is not a beat that can be covered by telephone. It's why most news organizations won't invest in border reporting beyond parroting what federal government officials have to tell them. It's also why, I suspect, the immigration beat evolved from border reporting. It's cheaper to cover immigrants within the community than to spend time and resources at the source. When I moved to the Southwest a decade ago, there were a good dozen border reporters from San Diego to Brownsville. These days, there are two in Arizona, two in California, none in New Mexico and a smattering of coverage by the Texas newspapers. One result of this is waking up to see my stories appear in the mainstream press, which is fine; I'm not complaining. It works both ways; I lift from them, they lift from me.
There's a few ideas I've thought about to sustain independent reporting on the Web site. The idea of donations is repulsive and weak. I don't know when people started thinking journalism needs to be treated like the vague necessity of a pet shelter, but that's where many are leading to and that's sad. I'm not risking getting my ear shot off in Culiacán for the sake of a dollar donation. In a more practical sense, it's also unsustainable.
Putting the site behind a pay-wall is an idea I'm willing to explore. The question becomes how many readers would be willing to pay for access to the site. My focus in such an endeavor would, again, be sustainability. If I could get, say, 300 committed readers at $3 a month, I'd go back to making the site a full-time endeavor.
Advertising is another option and here there's two problems. The first, obviously, is the economic climate. I've had a good half dozen companies approach me about putting up an ad on BorderReporter and that's fantastic. They subsequently pulled away when they realized I wasn't selling ads for ten dollars a month. I have no interest in you clicking madly on my ads like some sort of meth addict. I do have an interest in you helping me to propagate the site's audience. That leads me to a solution.
Until I can find a way to sustain independent reporting on the site, BorderReporter needs to be a collective effort between you and I. If you find what the Web site provides useful, then you need to shop links around; to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Fark, Drudge, anywhere you can put them. We're at about 1,300 to 3,000 unique visitors a day; it wouldn't take much from a tenth of you to expand the readership. We're talking about mutually-fulfilling symbiosis. It's tricky; I'll be honest about that. The topics we discuss here and the information I provide is not pleasant. If Paris Hilton bared all in Tijuana, we'd be on Gawker in a second. A dozen decapitated souls in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, not so much. The media, though I don't think the public, is squeamish.
Now you gotta temper what I'm saying because what I don't want to see is a burst of activity throughout the first week; the key is sustainability; walking down the hill toward the cows, not charging at them.
BorderReporter is not going away. When I hear of chismes, good tales or simply have a question, you can continue to look for them here. I'll continue allowing unmoderated comments (so long as they don't piss me off). And when there's breaking news, I'll put that up as well. But I'm going to greatly reduce the amount of time I spend on the site; I don't yet know for how long.
So that's where we're at. As always, I'm open to ideas.
