Net effect

Robert Winters isn't the first community journalist in cyberspace. What makes him different is that he's good.

Cambridge by Jason Gay

Every month, Robert Winters, a 43-year-old mathematics lecturer at Harvard University, publishes an electronic newsletter called the Cambridge Civic Journal. The Journal, which is available via e-mail or on the Web at www.math.harvard.edu/~rwinters/ccj.html, is a meticulous chronicle of political life in Cambridge, with particularly exhaustive coverage of city-council meetings, which Winters zealously attends. The year-and-a-half-old publication shows a civil servant's affection for the political minutiae that print newspapers scrupulously avoid -- tidbits from zoning hearings, board-of-health updates, voting records, and so on. In short, the Journal electronically delivers what a community newspaper is supposed to, but usually does not.

"It's very useful," Cambridge's mayor, Frank Duehay, says of the Journal. "I almost always read it."

Winters and the Cambridge Civic Journal represent an electronic-journalism subculture that is blossoming today. A growing number of citizens, frustrated by the lack of depth in their local newspapers, are taking to their desktop computers and Web sites to create their own alternative media. The attractions of this form are many: electronic newsletters can be produced at a fraction of the cost of print publications, distributed infinitely, and updated continuously. And you don't need a journalism-school degree or even advertisers in order to start your own. You just have to know how to type.

"You're going to see more of it," says Miles Fidelman, a Boston-based Internet activist who is currently working on an online telecommunications newsletter. "There is a general trend away from print."

What's more, the success of publications like the Cambridge Civic Journal shows there is an audience for the kind of detailed, low-to-the-ground local reporting the conventional media have mostly abandoned. Winters shipped the first Journal to three dozen friends and associates; these days, his mailing list is approaching 500 names and growing. Politicians scroll down the Journal, looking for their names. Insiders ask Winters for election predictions and insights. Critics -- and Winters has a few of those -- chastise him for using the Journal to settle grudges and to advance personal agendas.

Indeed, in a short time, Robert Winters and his home computer have moved from the fringes of Cambridge's political scene to its mainstream. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the mainstream, searching for something different, moved to Robert Winters and his computer.

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When you take a look at Winters's Cambridge Civic Journal, your first observation is that it doesn't suck. This is no small feat. Community electronic journalism is a nascent field, and much of it, well intentioned though it may be, suffers from bad writing, inconsistent coverage, and gratuitous ax-grinding by the publisher. Some publications are too goofy or extreme to be taken seriously. Durability is also an issue: many small e-zines peter out after a few issues.

To date, the Journal has avoided those pitfalls. Each month, Winters publishes an issue that follows the same basic format: a table of contents; a foreword in which Winters summarizes the political activity of the past month; detailed reports on the month's city-council meetings; a collection of moments from various boards and hearings; and a calendar of upcoming Cambridge events. Occasionally the Journal includes contributions from outsiders, but most of the time, Winters is the sole correspondent.

A Queens native with thinning red hair who favors rumpled baseball caps and T-shirts, Winters is no stranger to Cambridge politics. In the late '80s, while completing his mathematics PhD at Boston University, he helped develop the city's first curbside recycling program. That effort helped Winters get a seat on the board of the Cambridge Civic Association, the city's most venerable interest group. But Winters didn't always mesh well with the progressive CCA leadership -- his support of city manager Robert Healy, a favorite CCA target, didn't endear him to colleagues -- and eventually he was asked to leave. Winters then ran for city council as part of the comparatively conservative Alliance for Change ticket, the first of three straight unsuccessful attempts for a council slot. (A word about political labels in hyperliberal Cambridge: When someone is described as conservative, don't think Barry Goldwater. Think of a Democrat who buys coffee at Starbucks.)

With his council aspirations on hold, Winters has served the city in a variety of advisory roles, from working with the water and sewer commission to preparing Cambridge's proportional-representation election process.

But he may be best known as a loyal attendee of council meetings, where he's usually plunked with other political die-hards in the back benches of the second-floor Sullivan Chamber in City Hall. These meetings can be excruciatingly long -- up to five or six hours -- and may feature mind-numbing debates over bureaucratic procedure, as well as a public-comment period in which citizens demand everything from free parking to the return of political prisoners being held in Peruvian jails. The sessions are an acquired taste, even for the councilors. Winters is one of those rare masochistic creatures who find them entertaining.

"Some people go to the health club or to the bar," Winters said over lunch on a recent afternoon at Mr. and Mrs. Bartley's Burger Cottage in Harvard Square. "But on Monday nights, I know I can go to City Hall and have a real conversation with people I've known for a while, and that's better than staying home and watching television."

Winters's political philosophy can best be described as pragmatic centrism: he has an optimist's faith in government, a bureaucrat's love of process, and a mainstreamer's dislike for extremism. He detests rabble-rousing for rabble-rousing's sake -- Winters will occasionally skewer Cambridge activist groups for what he sees as pandering to people's fears -- and dislikes brinksmanship and backroom dealing. And considering that he has enough City Hall experience to be cynical, it's almost quaint the way he upholds the virtuous, if fading, ideal that local politics should be about local people.

"I think there has been a devaluation in Cambridge of what has historically been called 'civic life,' " Winters says. "I want to see old-fashioned civics regenerated."

There's no doubt that today's technology helps Winters promote his civic agenda. Whereas the independent journalists and pamphleteers of yesteryear had to scrape up a few hundred bucks and a printing press to put out a single issue, Winters can put out the Journal without leaving his chair or cracking his wallet. He doesn't have to answer to anyone about what he prints, and he makes all the rules (though the Journal usually arrives in the first week or two of the month, Winters refuses to adhere to a strict publication deadline).

"It provides a certain amount of freedom," Winters says. "You don't have to meet with a committee [to publish]. You just do it."

It is important to note that the Journal, even by the loosest of standards, is by no means an objective paper of record. Though Winters says he tries to report as fairly as possible, his coverage of civic affairs more closely resembles running commentary. It's not uncommon for him to editorialize here and there, whether it's needling a councilor for a particular comment or tossing a zinger at an activist group. (In this month's Journal, Winters bemoans the gaggle of "usual suspects" who regularly speak at city-council meetings. "It sure would be nice if the intelligence level of what goes on in the Sullivan Chamber were cranked up a notch or two," he writes.) It's sort of like Howard Cosell meets participatory politics.

"First of all, Robert's an incredibly good writer and an astute observer of the political scene," says Glenn Koocher, who hosts a political talk show on Cambridge's public-access TV station. "Second, he really does speak straight out on some issues. He can do that because he's not captive to any financial interests, or even a subscription audience."

Of course, in dishing out criticism, Winters has attracted critics of his own. Some detractors see him as a middle-of-the-road defender of the political status quo, saying he carries water for his political allies -- such as Healy, the city manager -- while throwing cheap shots at people he dislikes. There's little doubt that Cambridge's liberal-progressive establishment is not particularly enamored of Winters; one critic referred to the Journal as a "right-wing e-zine."

More troubling are questions about the role Winters, the person, should play in city politics. Winters doesn't see himself as an actual journalist -- he's more like a digital pamphleteer -- so he doesn't have any compunction about standing up at a city-council meeting and stating his mind on a particular issue (something for which a newspaper reporter would likely be fired). But others see a potential conflict in Winters's dual role as reporter and advocate -- particularly if Winters, as speculated, makes another run for the city council this fall.

"Robert wants to have it both ways," says Katherine Triantafillou, a progressive city councilor and an occasional target of Journal criticism. "He wants to participate in the process and be an observer, and I think that's very hard to do."

Winters says that if he decides to run for city council, he'll turn the Journal's reins over to someone else. While he agrees that the Journal 's content sometimes reflects his own opinions, he points out that he actively solicits outside contributors of all political persuasions. And he adds that other political players are free to produce their own publications. Indeed, last year saw the print launch of the Cambridge Candle, a new progressive newspaper that also plans an electronic version.

And that's exactly the direction community journalism is heading in these days. In the absence of aggressive local coverage by the mainstream media, the public increasingly will be turning to alternative publications for the news it wants. And as Robert Winters and the Journal have proven, today's alternative -- electronic journalism -- is simple, provocative, and more available than ever.

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.