March 15, 2020

One year ago, I was about to celebrate my two-year anniversary in business – and it took me nearly an hour to get from downtown Sioux Falls to south Sioux Falls to do it.

That’s because roads were closed citywide, the result of massive flooding caused by a big snowfall and a quick thaw.

And that feels like a gentle spring rain compared with the challenges of this week.

I intended to write about the media industry this week – how it feels fundamentally changed in the three years since I decided to launch my own business, which has a news component.

And it does. Even just this year, I have been – sadly – amazed at the level of vitriol even I, who covers business news, sometimes encounter from the public.

I have loved this profession from the first time I encountered it as a 15-year-old kid writing a story for my high school newspaper. I love to tell stories and help my audience understand things that matter to them – to teach through my work, as I learn myself.

I have to had to accept, though, that my profession has been vilified in recent years. There are members of my audience who do not trust me, who think I have an agenda, simply because I am engaging in the practice of journalism. They don’t know me. They don’t know what’s behind my work. I’m simply a member of the media, and that’s enough to define their perception of me.

I’m far from alone. This declining perception, along with changing consumer habits, has led to a significant drop in the number of people who regularly consume local news through traditional channels. There are fewer people reading physical newspapers and consuming broadcast news over the air than there were three years ago when I started my business.

I don’t know that we will change how people consume media, but I am convinced the only way to combat the damaged perception of media is by bringing the best of my profession. It’s by approaching every story with an open mind and a desire to tell the story, not define the story. It’s by being abundantly transparent in my advertising relationships. It’s by being willing to immediately acknowledge when we make mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. We’re not perfect. We don’t always fully understand the story, and sometimes stories change. I am always willing to consider making a correction or clarification. And I am always amazed when sources are surprised that we will.

Last week brought an unprecedented experience to us in Sioux Falls and nationwide. The global COVID-19 pandemic is illustrating, in an exceptionally powerful way, the importance of a strong media infrastructure. Our local media outlets are doing outstanding work keeping us updated; at SiouxFalls.Business, we are focused on the business and industry impacts of this event.

Times of crisis test the systems we have built and support as a society. In this case, it will test our health care system, our public and private sector leadership, our supply chains and our infrastructure for conducting work remotely in a wide range of industries.

It also will show the good and the lacking in our media infrastructure. Despite diminished resources in some organizations, I think you’ll see local staff step up in a big way to ensure communities have the information they need to get through the pandemic. The need for objective, accurate reporting at all levels, though, is especially acute in a situation like this. So is the need for trust between the audience and the media. I hope enough of all of this is left.

As we approach our fourth year at SiouxFalls.Business, I am incredibly grateful for our readership growth and loyalty. Those I mentioned earlier who sometimes attack our profession truly are a small minority in my world. Most of our readers are happy to be informed, both of our successes and challenges as a business community, and they reward our work by sharing it with others. I can’t ask for more than that.

Likewise, our growing number of sponsor-partners has allowed me to expand our coverage, our team and our reach. Nearly every organization that signed on as a sponsor of SiouxFalls.Business three years ago is still with us today, and many others have joined along the way. I am extremely proud to be providing a platform that is valuable enough in multiple ways that these outstanding organizations want to work with us.

There is no way I could have done this alone; I was reminded of that as recently as last Friday, when full-time content manager Rosemary McCoy had a rare day off. Since very early on, she has been a believer in this business model and a key reason why it has worked. She’s the force behind some of our most-read stories and my constant reminder that the highest standards of journalism are what we have to strive to meet. I might talk about accuracy being important, but she’s often the one who ensures we’re delivering it.

Friday, I was walking through the call center that Avera is using to screen patients before potential COVID-19 testing when an employee I didn’t know looked up from his desk.

“I was just on your website!” he told me.

It was a little moment, but one that I’m fortunate to experience increasingly often. Whether I’m getting groceries, at a restaurant, at the airport or visiting other offices such as that one, readers talk to me about the site and tell me how they use it to keep up with Sioux Falls news.

I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to create a niche product designed to reach a specific set of decision-makers. But along the way, I think we’ve created a community news source that is valuable to an increasingly broadening base of people. Thank you, whether you’ve read one story or many of them, for helping us grow into the business we are today.