Peer News

We at Peer News have talked about, thought about, and dreamed about this day for a long time.  We’re putting the finishing touches on the Honolulu Civil Beat.  And although we’re not officially “open” yet (that will come on May 4), we are opening some of the doors, turning on some of the lights, and cracking a few windows ajar as a pre-opening, if you will.

As someone who was born and raised in Hawaii, I’m especially excited that this day is finally here.  We’re just getting started and we have a lot of work ahead of us.  But it’s definitely exciting.

We’ve taken a big step today laying the foundation for Peer News in Hawaii. Today we announced that John Temple has joined us as Editor. We’re fortunate to have someone with his background building and leading our news operation. John was most recently editor and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. In addition to an exemplary background in publishing, editing, and reporting, John has also created several innovative platforms and led projects that helped promote civil discussion of political and social issues. Frankly, these efforts were probably ahead of their time. We’re confident, however, that now is the right time to bring this kind of thinking to our local news service.

You can learn more about John and hear directly from him at his blog. He’s going to be busy hiring reporters and an assistant editor as soon as possible. If you’re interested in those position please check out our postings for reporters and assistant editor.

As for me, I’ll be working with the team toward a launch in early Q2. As CEO and publisher I have a lot of work to do but I’m excited for the challenge. I’m passionate about providing people with a new way to get their news and understand the issues facing our community, and more importantly a vehicle to enable increased involvement and impact on those issues.

As always, we promise to update you when we have more to share. In the meantime, if you’d like to hear what was discussed on today’s conference call, please check back later here where we’ll post the file.

Update: The audio recording (.wav file) is available here: Peer News 012110 2PM ET

Aloha! It’s been a little while since my last post but we’re making progress here at Peer News. If you are a reporter covering the space and you’d like to hear what we’ve been up to, please join us on the phone Thursday, January 21st at 9:00am HT/11PT/2ET. Please be aware that you must register for the call in advance. Contact Sarah Steven via email at ssteven@peernews.com to get dial-in details. If you can’t join us live, we’ll get a replay posted on this site as soon as possible.

I’m excited to update you on what we’ve been up to at Peer News. You probably saw a tweet that we’re looking for an Editor to join our team. Here’s why.

If you’ve been following my tweets you may know that I’ve been interested in journalism for quite a while. In 2008, Randy Ching and I co-founded Peer News Inc. with the goal of empowering citizens and encouraging greater civic participation through media. We believe that a strong democracy requires an engaged society supported by effective news reporting and analysis. And, we believe that this can be done in a profitable, sustainable way.

So, we’re starting something up in our own backyard. We are creating a Honolulu-based local news service that will produce original, in-depth reporting and analysis of local issues in Hawaii. Since it’s 2009 (almost 2010!) this will be an online-only service. Although we haven’t fully defined our coverage areas yet, we know the focus will be public affairs and civic matters that impact communities across Hawaii.

We’re still very early in the process of building this new organization. In fact, we don’t even have a name for it yet. However, we’re ready to hire an Editor — someone who shares our passion for the mission and can lead the team. You can learn more about the Editor position and let us know your interest here. (Our focus right now is on the Editor position, but if you’re a reporter or developer, you can also let us know if we should keep you in mind for future openings.)

Over the last year, we’ve been talking to a lot of people in the industry about journalism and how we might be able to have an impact, listening and learning as much as we can. One of the people who has been a huge help in particular as we began to envision our local news service is long-time industry insider Howard Weaver, and he has a few thoughts about what we’re up to.

We have a lot of work to do before our public launch in early 2010. We’re focused on building a really talented team here in Honolulu. For our Ginx users, we’re sorry to let you know that we’ll be shutting down the service at the end of 2009. We learned a lot and greatly appreciate all the interaction and feedback from you over the past year. We’re huge fans of Twitter, so you will still see us online, but we want our developers focused on the new organization and news service.

If you are a reporter who wants more information so you can write about what we’re doing please get in touch with Sarah Steven (@sarahkay or ssteven@peernews.com or 650-482-2304). I hope you’ll understand that we’re really busy at the moment, so Randy and I won’t be able to speak with you directly at this time.

Thanks for your interest, and we look forward to updating you when there is more news to share!