Three years after becoming one of the most despised men in American journalism, James Macpherson is ready to expand his news coverage of Pasadena by launching a web TV channel to showcase local businesses. Again, he’ll do it by employing workers in Asia.
His website, Pasadena Now, was reviled and ridiculed when he couldn’t pay his staff of American journalists in 2007 and outsourced the reporting duties: He assigned low-wage workers in India to rewrite press releases and cover City Council meetings via webcam.
Macpherson said he’s managed to make some money with that tactic. And he hopes that Pasadena Now TV, which will go live Oct. 17 with news broadcasts, event coverage and lifestyle shows about the city, will attract more people than his existing news venture. He expects to make more money this time out.
“This is a local TV station for a community that doesn’t have one,” Macpherson said. “It’s a really rich tapestry that I think will be very watchable and very monetizable.”
PNTV will webcast shows from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. At first he’ll show some repeats, but eventually plans to have a morning talk show, evening news program and a series of lifestyle shows centered on Pasadena businesses. Macpherson said he wants to model the website after a traditional TV station with shows streaming on the site at set times throughout the day.
His old news website, PasadenaNow.com, will remain. The new web TV address is PasadenaNowTV.com.
Macpherson acknowledged that he won’t be able use his international employees to shoot video, but he doesn’t plan to abandon the outsourcing model that drew antagonism toward Pasadena Now.
For his web TV station, he’ll pay employees in India and the Philippines to sell advertising and edit video at wages as low as $4 an hour.
He also plans to use a low-budget but high-quality film technology and a green screen to create set backgrounds.
“We have to get the expenses down significantly in order to make a profit,” he said. “I’m careful with money in everything I do.”
PNTV will charge businesses for sponsoring shows. For example, a restaurant chef who wants to show off on Pasadena Now would pay $195 for a four-minute cooking segment on the show “Chefs’ Secret Recipes.” Advertisers can also air 30-second video ads in between segments for $10. Macpherson estimated that the website could generate more than $500,000 in revenue from ads and sponsorships in its first year.
However, Pasadena Now receives only 80,000 visitors to its website each month, compared with 750,000 monthly viewers for a similar community news website called West Seattle Blog.
With his low numbers, Marc Cooper, an associate professor at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, questions whether Macpherson will be able to make much money.
“I would be very skeptical,” said Cooper. “It’s hard to turn those sorts of numbers into very much money.”
Outsourcing criticism
Macpherson, who at 55 has meticulously combed silver hair but sports boyish blue blazers, started Pasadena Now in 2004 with his wife, Candice Merrill, from their home near the Rose Bowl.
At first they used local reporters and writers to generate content for the website. But when Pasadena employees became too expensive for the startup, Macpherson decided to hire less expensive workers from India and the Philippines. It was a cost-saving trick he learned while working in the apparel industry, making clothing for designers who had outsourced manufacturing to Vietnam.
“I did have reporters but I couldn’t afford them. I went into a financial hole,” he said. “Even if they came to me and said they had nothing, I still had to write the paycheck.”
His decision got a good deal of notice, particularly in journalism circles, where it was seen as both insane and sacrilegious. Reporters, after all, are supposed to understand their beats deeply, know their sources and be part of the community they cover.
“Nobody in their right mind would trust the reporting of people who not only don’t know the institutions but aren’t even there to witness the events and nuances,” USC journalism professor Bryce Nelson told the Associated Press at the time. “This is a truly sad picture of what American journalism could become.”
Today, Pasadena Now employs five local “stringers” – Pasadena-based freelance reporters who attend events, take photos and conduct interviews – and five international writers who construct stories from the information provided by the stringers. Many of the current employees – local and foreign – will help assemble videos for PNTV.
Macpherson decided to make the foray into hyperlocal video broadcasts after a rough year for Pasadena Now. Although he said the website is profitable, thanks to more than 125 advertisers, revenue has slowed since last year.
In part, he blames the recession. But he also points to increased competition from Patch, an AOL-funded news organization that operates 100 local news websites that will soon include the surrounding communities of Monrovia, Sierra Madre and South Pasadena.
“I knew the second I saw it that Patch would be extremely disruptive at the local level and would leave a lot of newspapers badly crippled,” he said. “I’m completely surrounded by Patch. So now’s a great time to come up with something completely new.”
USC’s Cooper said Macpherson is justified in his concern about competition from Patch: It has a larger budget to pay local reporters and freelancers.
“If I were the publisher of Pasadena Now, I’d have to keep asking myself what I bring to community news that somebody else can’t do just as well,” he said.
Macpherson, of course, thinks video could be the answer. And since Google TV is scheduled to hit the market about the same time as PNTV’s launch, that means people who buy an Internet-enabled TV set for Google TV will be able to watch his shows along with regular television programs. That may give him a little boost.
He predicts that local residents will tune in to check out the shows and ads featuring area businesses.
“Small merchants are going to be our local stars. People like that,” he said.
PNTV has rented office space to build a studio to shoot its shows, a few of which are already in the works.
Innate Family Chiropractic Clinic plans to sponsor a weekly show with tips for staying healthy. Adana Moses, the clinic’s co-founder, expects the PNTV show to generate more business than traditional advertising because more people are likely to watch a video and share it with friends.
“It’s easy for video to go viral and reach a lot of people,” she said. “We like having the ability to play those videos for our clients.”
Macpherson is not oblivious to the criticism he’s received for his unorthodox business model. But he points to the number of layoffs in the industry as a sign that newspapers and local TV stations need to be open to cheaper ways to gather and distribute news.
“Most of the journalists who criticized me are now trying to figure out how to stay employed,” he said.
