ChicagoNow, the loose collection of Chicago-focused beatblogs, has picked up Alexander Russo’s District 299 beatblog.

ChicagoNow is a new media venture by the Tribune Co. that is taking established bloggers in the Chicago area and bringing them in under one umbrella.Russo’s work will be appearing on both Catalyst, his sponsor for about two years and ChicagoNow. ChicagoNow has been doing non-exclusive deals with bloggers as a way to keep costs down.

By being non-exclusive, ChicagoNow pays bloggers less, but this also gives bloggers the freedom to repost their work on other networks or on their own personal blogs. ChicagoNow is bringing together established bloggers under one umbrella with the hope of being able to deliver more visitors and a bigger community.

For now, Russo is trying to keep the content the same between the two sites, but he is not ruling out unique content appearing on either ChicagoNow or Catalyst. In many ways this is new territory for Russo. Catalyst is a non-profit and their expectations for District 299 are much different than the for-profit ChicagoNow.

Russo will be spending more time thinking about SEO and ROI. His work will not only have to have educational value but also monetary value.

ChicagoNow is an aggressive, HuffingtonPost-esque network of bloggers. So, what would they want with an education blogger? ChicagoNow is moving into some more news-oriented territory to augment their entertainment-focused blogs.

“I think the second-wave of ChicagoNow blogs is going to be more serious,” Russo said. “I think they are moving to balance things out. They are trying to balance both what needs talking about with what people want to talk about.”

District 299, however, would appear a better fit for ChicagoNow than Catalyst anyway. Russo has always been an aggressive, opinionated, fast moving blogger. Russo’s approach has always seemed at odds with Catalyst’s staid mission, “To improve the education of all children through authoritative journalism and leadership of a constructive dialogue among students, parents, educators, community leaders and policy makers.”

“Catalyst and District 299 have always been — stylistically and substantively — very different,” Russo said. “It was a big stretch for them to take me on in the first place.”

But Russo, a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University, is very passionate about education reform and is very good at fostering conversations about education. So while stylistically, Russo’s work is much different than the rest of what appears in Catalyst’s publications, what he is trying to accomplish fits right in with Catalyst’s mission.

So while it may seem paradoxical that Russo’s work would fit in on a both a serious education site and an aggressive new media site, it’s really more a testament to how Russo is able to take a serious topic and make it interesting and conversational. Ultimately, ChicagoNow wants to be “an online town square for the Chicago of right now.”

The one thing that Russo’s District 299 has always excelled at is being a place for people to have conversations.

We also discuss in this week’s podcast:

• Will District 299 change now that it has a new backer?
• Why will Russo be doing more link journalism and curation now? Why do readers like curation?
• How will District 299 become more hyperlocal, focusing on individual schools?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

He’s just runs two independent blogs. So, forgive him if he seems to break some of the conventions of journalism. He does things the way he does because that’s what he thinks his readers want, not what he learned in j-school years ago.

He originally had a national blog, This Week in Education, that he began using to report on Chicago school news. Eventually he realized, however, that national readers didn’t care about Chicago school issues and Chicago readers didn’t care about national issues. The most logical solution was to split the blog in two.

Thus, District 299 was born. Like many bloggers, Russo started the blog because there was a niche to be filled. Specifically, he thought coverage and conversation about the Chicago Public Schools was sorely lacking.

“I was in in Chicago, and I thought the Chicago schools were an interesting, if dysfunctional world, that wasn’t getting much attention,” he said. “Basically, I was trying to create a place to track what was going on in CPS — Chicago Public Schools — and other people who were in the system or who were curious about the system could add their two cents or share what was going on their school.”

Neither blog is independent anymore. Russo’s District 299 blog was brought under the umbrella of Catalyst-Chicago, which is dedicated to school reform. This Week in Education is now sponsored by Scholastic.

Russo is also a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University, studying education reporting. He understands his beat better than most journalists, because, in many ways, he is an expert on education. Russo has crafted a popular meeting place — a virtual water cooler — where people come to discuss issues.

Hosted by

Russo doesn’t say District 299 is his blog where he owns the conversation or that he is the No. 1 source for news on the Chicago school district. Rather, he says his blog is “hosted by journalist Alexander Russo, District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog is a 24/7 gathering place for Chicago education news, official and otherwise.”

The concept of his blog centers around him as a host for conversation and ideas. He puts ideas out there and lets others run with them.

“I feel like the gym teacher from back in the day whose idea of gym class was to roll out the basketballs and let people play,” he said. “I feel like I provide the space, I provide some of the equipment or the content and I sit and read the newspapers and look up when someone starts crying or asking for my attention.”

He said he has learned as much, if not more, about Chicago Public Schools from his blog than he did when he covered the schools as a freelance journalist, because now he has people within the district regularly sharing their thoughts and knowledge.

“There are so many people out there with so many interesting, first-hand experiences,” he said. “They don’t want to run a blog; they don’t have the time; they are leading their lives but they want to say, ‘here is what happened today at school.’ I love reading that stuff.”

The vast majority of what is on the District 299 blog is not what Russo’s thinks or knows, he said. It’s about what other people think and know. That’s the concept of “hosted by.”

“The blog is very much focused outwards, towards readers,” he said. “It’s not all about Alexander. It’s not all about much of my opinions. I’m just trying to create this nice, convenient place for people to vent or share their thoughts or break news.”

Readers adding value

Russo’s readers also help him report. They leave tips, info and links in the comments after posts. They also e-mail him tips from the link he leaves on his blog.

Beatblogging helps make a journalist more accessible, and for someone like Russo, it helps make his job easier. He doesn’t have the backing of a traditional media outlet, and he had to build his beat from the ground up.

“If I was a full-time reporting on the Chicago schools beat, I would want to have a [beatblog] for sources and for information,” he said.

The content that other people leave on his blog — their links, tips, stories, etc — is a big part of the allure of the District 299 blog. It’s not just that his readers send him tips, but it’s also that they contribute to the value of the blog in the comments section.

“I got the sense that it was a nice and regular part of their day — not just my content but also the reader’s content,” he said about his blog. “I think it’s key having that recent comments box up on the top-right of the blog. People come for my stuff, but they mostly come for each others’ stuff.”

This concept has worked well for Russo because his readers are largely people working for or involved with the district. When you have a network of knowledgeable users, you can often let them lead the conversation.

Passionate and transparent

Russo does not come from a traditional journalism background, and he never attended journalism school. He wasn’t brought up with the notion of “objective journalism.” Rather Russo strives to be transparent, accurate and fair.

“I don’t come from traditional journalism; so I didn’t come up with that whole objective journalism thing,” he said. “I don’t know if I particularly buy it. All the journalists I know have strong opinions about the things they cover and not telling readers what you think isn’t being transparent and sets up a false relationship.”

One of things that is very clear from reading the District 299 blog is that Russo is passionate about what he does. After all, he wouldn’t have started an independent blog with no funding without being passionate about the topic. The way he writes and covers his beat is different from most reporters.

“As much as my readers — many of whom are teachers and administrators in the system — like sharing their opinions and arguing with each other, and as much as they want me to play the moderator, referee role, they also want to know where I am, even if the disagree with me,” he said. “They need that occasionally.”

He jumps into the fray once or twice a week by posting something or entering the comments by saying what he thinks or by calling someone out on something. He said, however, the vast majority of the time he is simply collecting the news and pointing people to interesting content, while mixing in a little bit of original reporting.

Russo said that if people thought he was biased or unfair, they wouldn’t read his blog. With many of his readers working for or associated with the district, his point may have some validity. These aren’t people looking for gossip or snark. These are people looking for ways to make the Chicago School District better.

“I feel like my if my commentary or my questions were irresponsible or always broke left or right, people might get bored with it or they might step back from it,” he said about his blog. “But the fact that I’m asking questions in all directions helps. And I don’t think people just want straight news.”

Russo said that people want a mix of news and commentary from him. Ultimately, the best way to be a good blogger is to give people what they want.

More people and more blogs

Ideally, Russo would like to make the District 299 blog into a major source of news and commentary for education in Chicago. He also doesn’t think there is any reason to stop at Chicago either.

“Ultimately, I would love to grow this District 299 blog into something that has a bigger audience of teachers and parents,” he said, “Chicago has 400,000 kids and 30,000 teachers; I would love to be all of their homepages.”

Russo would like to start additional blogs for other school districts around the country. His target would be big cities that don’t have this sort of discussion going on. New York, for example, already has Gotham Schools and Dallas has the DISD Blog.

Those markets wouldn’t make sense for Russo to enter.

“But there are a lot of places out thee where there is no sort of water cooler,” he said. “Obviously, someone else would have to staff them, because being knowledgeable about the city is important. But I think I’ve sort of figured some things out about what makes a good post and what makes a good community.”

And when you’re hosting a blog centered around conversations, building a good community is key.