Joseloff's Dual Role 'Unusual': Media Experts

Though no formal precedent has been set, it's rare for a municipality's highest elected official also to serve as a news website publisher covering that same town, experts say.

Yet Westport has faced that very situation since 2005, when Gordon Joseloff — editor/publisher of WestportNow for two years at the time — took office as first selectman. Though it's common for news publishers to switch to political careers, it isn't clear what precedent there is for Joseloff's dual role, according to Charles Davis, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism who focuses on access to governmental information and media law.

“I think it is rather unusual for that relationship to be maintained after the person seeks office,” Davis told Patch.

Joseloff was moderator of the Representative Town Meeting when he launched WestportNow in 2003 and became its first editor. Records with the Connecticut secretary of the state show that WestportNow Media LLC was registered in 2009, with a business address on North Avenue — the same as Joseloff's home address.

The site offers hard news, standalone photos and videos and event coverage.

Joseloff told Patch that he launched WestportNow to bring an additional voice and news coverage to Westport "on a real-time basis."

"And others have followed suit,” Joseloff said. “I’ve always been ahead of the game … but now people can’t say WestportNow has a monopoly.”

That's because the town's online news coverage has been bolstered more recently, by sites that include Patch. Westport Patch went live on Election Day in 2009.

At the time Joseloff launched his site in 2003, the two newspapers in town had minimal online presence, and no online-only local news sources existed.

Joseloff compared himself and his enterprise, on a smaller scale, to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P.

Davis said he sees some key differences between the highest office-holders of Westport and New York City.

“[Bloomberg] is not covering a township. He’s not covering New York even,” Davis said. "He’s covering international finance.”

Bloomberg also — in his formal education and early career — always focused on financial markets. Joseloff's roots are in the news.

In his early years, Joseloff worked for the now-defunct Town Crier, covering Westport. Later, the Syracuse University graduate worked internationally as a foreign correspondent for CBS News and United Press International.

When Joseloff was elected first selectman, the New York Times reported that he considered selling the site or getting a financial interest in a blind trust. Instead, Joseloff opted to take over as publisher and hired an editor to take his spot on the site.

“It’s a free country and I don’t think there’s any reason to give it up,” Joseloff told Patch. “I pay the bills for WestportNow.”

Online news isn't expensive, a fact that's helped spawn the creation of outlets run by nontraditional journalists. According to Dale Maharidge, an associate professor at Columbia Journalism School, those new journalists likely will include greater numbers of politicians.

“In this day and age of citizen journalism, with everyone having their finger in the pie of journalism, it must be becoming common,” Maharidge said.

Tom Dudchik — a former member of the Connecticut General Assembly who worked as deputy chief of staff to Gov. Lowell Weicker and as deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection — after his political career founded the Capitol Report, an aggregating service focused on Hartford. Dudchik said he's seen a rise in politicians using social media to inform constituents.

"Last year there was only a handful of people with Facebook or Twitter accounts, but now almost everyone has it," he said.

Such new uses for Web-based media soon could deliver Joseloff the publisher some company among elected officials, according to Jeremy Gilbert, an assistant professor at Medill, Northwestern University's journalism school.

“A wave of technology changes have brought the tools of journalism to the hands of nearly every person,” Gilbert told Patch in an e-mail. “Politicians now have the same access to publish that professional journalists do. This creates lots of challenges but also new opportunities.”