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The Tyee

The Tyee is an independent online Canadian magazine that focuses coverage on news and media of British Columbia. It was founded in November 2003 by its editor-in-chief, David Beers, an award-winning writer and former features editor at the Vancouver Sun. Since its launch it has recruited a number of other writers, including Steve Burgess, Murray Dobbin, Michael Geist, Terry Glavin, Mark Leiren-Young, Rafe Mair, Will McMartin, Shannon Rupp, Vanessa Richmond and Dorothy Woodend.

The name is based on the current local definition of tyee salmon - a Chinook, Spring or King salmon of 30 lbs or more. However, a century ago, the named carried more meaning, i.e. a chief, a king, anything of superior order. It also embodies the magazine’s dedication to publishing lively, informative news and views, to “roam free, and go where we wish” as the tyee salmon do.

Original articles are published each day, focusing on politics, culture and life. It has also expanded its activities to a blog - The Hook. Within two years of its launch, over 1,000 articles have been published, with a vibrant community of more than 1,500 registered commenters, as well as reaching 89,458 unique visitors. In 2009, according to BCBusiness magazine, The Tyee has a notably growing B.C. readership, up 77 percent since 2007 to approximately 175,000 unique visitors a month.

In 2007, The Tyee was recognized nationally as an Honourable Mention in the category of Excellence in Journalism for Small, Medium, or Local Media. The category includes all Canadian online journalism wiht less than 500,000 unique visitors a month. In 2009, the BCBusiness magazine also placed The Tyee as ninth of their list of the province’s tope ten most innovative companies. The Tyee was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award by the Radio and Television News Directors Association twice within three years, in 2009 and 2011. It was the only Canadian news organization to be honoured for the national (North America-wide) category in 2011. It was also runner up for the 2011 Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award.

Background
In 2001, David Beers was fired from the features editor position at the Vancouver Sun as part of CanWest Global’s famous purge of top-level journalists. Beers says, “When I was fired it was kind of a wake-up call, I was writing some forthright things after 9/11—they weren’t radical, I didn’t think, but they challenged the jingoistic tone of many commentators and politicians in Canada as well as the US.” Beers has openly expressed his opinion that CanWest had abused its position and failed to provide fair and balanced coverage. Afterwards, Beers contemplated exploring online journalism, and was encouraged by an anonymous philanthropist who had a similar goal, and finances to support the plan. The US website Salon.com became the model.

Online Magazine Model
According to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, who awards the Edward R. Murrow award, The Tyee is admirable for their independence and creative commitment to a local focus, the regional focus on British Columbia, while maintaining a fair amount of coverage extending to Canada and beyond. The Tyee is fairly exclusive in this style in Canada, as there are not many other online magazines that have the same focus.

For examples, Andrew MacLeod, their full time B.C. legislative reporter, regularly publishes original in-depth series on critical issues. Their reporter Geoff Dembicki went to Washington, and wrote a 15-part series on oil sands lobbying there. The Tyee also published a 17-part series on strengthening local food economies in Ontario and B.C. reported by Colleen Kimmett, Jeff Nield and Justin Langille. The Tyee picks key areas for in depth investigative or solutions-focused reporting.

The advantage of online magazines are that they are immediately accessible; it’s publishing schedule minute-to-minute. According to David Beers, this allows for "coopetition," the accumulating and sharing of others’ content to create media that correlates with the community’s interests. It's tied into the power of social media, and, employed well, can be productively interactive.

Being an online magazine, there are less chances to introduce the production crew, such as having an editor’s letter in every issue. The Tyee has set a goal to "open up" in order for their readers to gain a better understanding of who they are, and what they are about. In result, it may give the community more opportunities to contribute to The Tyee’s daily content. The Tyee is planning to hold more public events in their attempt to be less virtual, and more present in the physical world. David Beers explains that, "after eight years, it's time we came out from behind our screens and started shaking hands with the thousands of people who visit The Tyee and make us a vibrant community."

Blog
In 2008, The Tyee launched a new blog called The Hook. According to investigative editor and overseer, Monte Paulsen, The Hook is a “superblog,” because The Hook publishes quick, frequent, timely reports and analysis by experienced Tyee journalists and a wide network of contributors, unlike most blogs that offer works of one or two journalists. Posts are approximately 200-300 words in length, allowing coverage of a greater number and variety of topics that have not been touched upon before. As a business initiative, the blog offers more space for advertising, since online “retail space” is a challenge for online publishers, unlike print magazines that can simply add advertising-only pages. The blog enables marketers additional opportunities.

Interactive and Multimedia Content
Unlike many online magazines, The Tyee has very minimal interactive and multi-media content, and is largely based on written story. According to Beers, it is not that The Tyee does not wish to have such features, but are rather limited in people and in-house resources. Rather than spreading themselves out thin, The Tyee focuses on their goal of publishing journalism that cannot be ignored by influentials and decision-makers by putting all their attention on the text.

In terms of visual content, The Tyee runs a lot of photography, and have had immensely positive results with "crowd sourced photography." The Tyee flickr pool draws thousands of images, and a new one is featured every day on the site. These images are often run in the stories, and on photo essays by the readers. For example, on Labour Day, The Tyee ran 20 images of people at work taken by The Tyee readers. This approach resulted in a main feature, called "The People’s Podium," on The Tyee everyday during the Olympics. It included approximately a dozen photos taken by readers that were funny, poignant, ironic - images that are supposedly very different from the spectacle-enhancing photos other media were producing. In the fall, The Tyee plans to take this idea forward into video. It will be launching a multi-media window that features videos, and photo slide shows provided or recommended by their readers.

Funding
In 2010, according to Beers, The Tyee’s annual revenue of about $500,000 to $600,000 includes $450,000 from ongoing sale of equity, $75,000 from advertising, $50,000 from grants, $25,000 from reader donations, and several thousand from renting out newsroom desks.

1. Topical pledge drives:

The Tyee prepares a multiple-choice list of popular topics, and any money donated toward each one would be guaranteed to go to funding that topic. Beers calls this “crowdsourcing the editorial board.” Just as major donors and foundations influence their grants, small donors can also enjoy the same privilege. For example, Beers provided donors a choice of which issues The Tyee should be covering during Canada’s 2009 elections, the pledge brought in $25,000 in 10 days.

2. Interest-group ownership:

More than half of The Tyee’s money comes from unions, specifically, Working Enterprises, a family of companies affiliated with the British Columbia Federation of Labor that also includes insurance, travel and financial services firms that cater to Canadian union members. In exchange for an annual subsidy of $300,000, Working Enterprises owns two-thirds of The Tyee’s theoretically for-profit operation. Investor Eric Peterson owns the other third, for annual payments of $150,000.

3. Renting out desks in the newsroom:

The Tyee’s office above Vancouver’s Chinatown is a little bigger than necessary, so they have made three desks available for rental at $250 a month each, wireless Internet, kitchen, and utilities are included. The tenants are, essentially, co-working in a newsroom. Beers sees potential for selling access to newsroom synergies, “journalists can be pretty valuable to some people — there’s a certain rigor and skepticism about what we do.” One of The Tyee’s desk tenants, Mitchell Anderson, the general manage of a local beachcombers’ co-op and an occasional freelance writer, explains that “the rent is relatively cheap and it’s a nice location, but the main thing I get out of that is a peer group, I really enjoy chatting with bright people about interesting things.”

Fellowship Fund
The Tyee Fellowship Funds are charitable funds separate from The Tyee. The funds are held at and managed by the national public foundation, Tides Canada Foundation. An independent advisory board, apart from Tides Canada and The Tyee, reviews all the applications, and chooses four selections. Tides Canada then disburses fellowship grants from the two funds. Fellowship winners each receive $5,000 to produce a series of three or more articles, running at least 1,000 words. Tides Canada owns the reports, and publishing rights that result from the fellows' research, which, as required by Canadian charity law, are intended for broad public education; therefore, the widest possible public dissemination.

The Tyee has first publication rights to these reports, and then, on Tides Canada's behalf, responds to requests for republication by others. The author owns the ideas and data gathered during the research and writing of the reports. After the terms of the fellowship grant have been fulfilled, and the resulting reports have been published, the author is free to produce new and different content (articles, books, films, etc.) from that research, and to sell that content to whomever he or she wishes and keep all rights and proceeds.

The Tyee Investigative Fellowship funds investigative research and reporting focused on British Columbia, while The Tyee Solutions Fellowship funds research and reporting on promising attempts at solving problems facing B.C. This may include an emerging body of knowledge, small scale experiments or broader initiatives with evident, positive results, and may include reporting outside the province if the findings are applicable here. Although reporting must relate directly to B.C., the subject matter is not restricted; example topics include education, the environment, human rights, economics, worker safety, health, addiction, gender and sexuality, poverty, government, consumer ethics, etc.

Tyee Solutions Society (TSS)
The Tyee Solutions Society (TSS) is non-charitable, non-profit, and exists to fund groups of journalists focused on particular subjects: food security, education, youth well being, etc. Directed by Michelle Hoar, with Fen Hsiao on staff, the TSS is separate from The Tyee, though it is guaranteed an outlet on The Tyee. The journalism it produces is intended to be shared with other media outlets as well, creating PDFs, books, public events, and any other means to engage the public's attention. The TSS has had good luck attracting foundation support for such journalism projects, including series on affordable housing, food security, green building, and, soon to be released in partnership with the CBC, aboriginal education. The TSS model allows employment of journalists who remain focused on one field, rather than having a limited amount of freelance money, and paying small amounts to whoever that wants to write. The foundation support for TSS allows journalists to have a regular pay cheque and develop their expertise.

Long Form Journalism
David Beers explains that long-form journalism works online for The Tyee when it is definitive. A number of The Tyee’s articles are long form, because coverage of the entire story, the narrative structure, requires it to be. Each day four features are published that almost always goes beyond a thousand words, often 1,500 words. A 4,000 words piece may be broken into three or four parts, and are consequently published over the course of two or three days.

The Tyee strives to make long form journalism digestible on the readers’ own terms through a series function. Each story has a yellow button that directs the reader to a page where the entire series it’s part of is compiled. This allows the series to be spread around as one url. Moreover, The Tyee’s stories are peppered with hyperlinks to enable their readers to explore deeper or other pieces.

The rise of social media is rather supportive to long-form journalism. In assuming that the audience for a long story is either people who wishes for the definitive piece, or people whose tastes spark their desire to immerse in a creatively structured piece of storytelling, then the audience is most likely dispersed yet potentially very passionate about this article. Social media, trusted recommendations through Facebook, Twitter and others, allows people find their desired piece of long form journalism.

The Tyee's Twitter feed has about 12,000 followers, a positive indication that their long pieces are not discouraging those people, it may even be a sign that these followers are long-form journalism appreciators.

Media Democracy
Beers expresses, “Vancouver is a heartbreaking place to be a dedicated news reporter, news editor, or news reader, because a single company owns the big papers, the big TV news station, and so many other media properties. There is simply not enough competition to keep that owner honest. By honest I mean dedicated to informing readers, rather than pandering to advertisers or to political allies.” Beers is alarmed for Canada’s journalistic direction and future, B.C. is a sign of the current trends, including consolidation of titles, cross-ownership of mediums, and convergence and homogenization of content. The Tyee is a hopeful experiment for change. Its modest success perhaps indicates that many people are searching for an alternative to what Canwest offers. Competition, for readers rather than advertisers, is the key to change in Canadian journalism. Publications healthy for democratic conversation are circulation driven.

Beers’ Proposals for Change:

1) Order the CRTC to not approve television broadcast licenses for companies that own daily newspapers in the same market.

2) Create legislation to break up concentration of media ownership where it is already too high. No one should be able to own all the major newspapers in a major market, such is Canwest’s case.

3) Prevent future deals that overly concentrate ownership.

4) Require owners to reveal profit margins for regional operations. The people who pay for subscriptions and advertisements should know if their investments in the local media scene are being directed away to Winnipeg, or being reinvested in local quality.

5) Foster media owned and operated by membership based societies. This member "co-op" model allows citizens take the lead in creating and supporting and democratically participating in decisions about their media. But because real journalism is expensive, government could provide money to membership-based media that garners a critical mass of support.

6) Provide tax write-offs to those who join media membership based societies.

7) Create tax incentives for media philanthropy. Some of North America's best publications exist because someone with wealth and ideals insures that they do. They would not come close to surviving on subscription and advertising fees alone.

8) Find ways to help alternative media do "convergence." The way for any smaller enterprise to build awareness is to cross mediums: an Internet news site contributing to a radio program, for example, or a magazine team helping to produce television documentaries.

9) Develop a community-based web portal to provide alternative perspectives. The portal could be managed by public libraries, provide CBC news and information to attract a critical mass of viewers, plus access to dozens of alternative news and information sources such as The Tyee, Vancouver Community Network, Working TV, Indymedia, and as many others as want to join in.

Criticism
There has been accusations of The Tyee having a left-wing bias due to its ties to big labour. In response, Beers says “I’m grateful the union movement has invested in media diversity. That’s all they are though: one of our investors. I have total guaranteed autonomy as Tyee editor, which certainly wasn’t the case, say, when I was an editor at CanWest.”