Here is the full e-mail from Steve Simpson:

Mr. Fancher,

When I was a grad student at the University of Washington school of Communications, the most popular topic of debate was the elimination of a representative media due to large corporations buying up all of the newspapers, radio stations, television stations, etc. It seemed like every seminar turned into a group vilification of the giant media corporations and grieving over the loss of true objective, representative journalism. I listened to these students with respect, but every once in awhile I would point out to them that they were wrong. I told them then, in the early 1990’s, that anyone’s voice and opinion could be heard. All they needed to do was open a Web site and hand out some flyers on the corner. As an example, I used my own education related Web site, www.edbriefs.com, opened as an experiment with $1,500 as a way to provide education news summaries to teachers who did not have time to read full articles. With little money, and even less business sense, I was able to have my voice heard.

I have been publishing my newsletter for 12 years. The circulation has been as high as 100,000 when I published only news summaries and is now around 25,000 now that I publish only my own original education columns, as near as I can figure it out. I told my fellow grad students that anyone with an opinion and a few hundred dollars could be heard. They may not have access to the hundreds of thousands of readers big newspapers have spent a century building, but they can be heard. I think your new blog is another example of new media providing a voice at little cost. I was reading yet another story this morning about how newspapers are losing circulation and laying off staff, this one about the Los Angeles Times. It made me think about USA Today.

Do you remember how so many journalist argued that USA Today, with its graphics and shortened stories, was the dumbed down first step in the death of true journalism? They argued that USA Today was not journalism, but flashy entertainment. It may have been, but it grew to a huge circulation very quickly. Tracy Record started the WestSeattleBlog.com, a different but thematically similar publication. USA Today was different and profitable. The WestSeattleBlog is different and will probably be profitable. Even my little education Web site became profitable. Now we have smart phones, cell phone cameras, and a generation of what Marc Prensky calls “digital natives.” So many of Microsoft’s employees are transient that they set up buses and offices with wireless capability to allow employees to simply drop in for a few hours when they were in the neighborhood. Television news stations routinely ask viewers to send in tips and video clips that often find their way into the primary broadcasts. Why can’t The Seattle Times plan a similar dramatic transformation from a large organization into a collective of organized, trained journalists?

I have been reading the print edition of The Seattle Times for many years. I have even had my articles published in the editorial pages of your newspaper. I love reading my newspaper in the quiet of the morning with my coffee, but I am going to cancel my subscription. My daughter is an environmental scientist. I want to reduce my carbon footprint. I want to stop recycling the hundreds of pounds of paper I use for only about one hour each day and reduce the energy it takes to put that paper on my doorstep. I will remain a loyal Seattle Times reader, but I wish you would do the same thing I argued for in those long lost grad school seminars. I wish you would decentralize. I wish you would break up your reporters and turn each of them loose. You will have to give up the safety and familiarity of the giant structure you now have, but you would still be The Seattle Times, just different. USA Today did it. The WestSeattleBlog did it. I even did it with my little education voice, Ed.Net. I don’t know what it would look like, but the marketplace of ideas is not found in your newsrooms and hallways. Turn your people loose, let them build their own networks of sources. A hundred trained journalists wandering around will provide readers with more powerful, timely, relevant small bits of news than any centralized publication ever could. Anyway, that is one reader’s opinion.

I will be sorry to lose my printed Seattle Times, but I will continue to seek out Seattle Times journalism.

Regards,

Steve Simpson