Check it Out: SPINearth Rocks the Planet

(MoneyWatch) 
Bump into most of your current and former colleagues in the media business these days and you'll see that awful dazed look of a deer caught in the headlights -- trapped by the fear that there is nowhere to go.

Not so Tom Hartle, the CEO of Hartle Media, and owner of a gaggle of magazine titles including San Francisco's leading city magazine, 7x7, as well as California Home & Design, and SPIN (the music mag). Hartle believes this is the "golden age of publishing," and he's filled four floors of an elegant old office building on Union Square with smart, young, talented people who are helping him prove that point.

Over lunch today, Hartle described to me his latest venture, SPINearth.tv, which though still in beta, already has the look and feel of a major media winner. "We've got 300 young citizen journalists in 75 cities around the world who are covering the music scene for us online," Hartle reported. "The results are fantastic!"

Curious, I logged on this afternoon, where I had my mind blown. There were hundreds of videos of concerts uploaded from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Oceania, Europe, and of course North America. These videos have the pure, raw power that only a true music fan can produce; there is none of the cool, calculated distance from the subject you are used to from professional music critics.

Here's how it works: "We gave correspondents around the world a blank canvas. They reported back stories about music and much more. Music was the vehicle that carried them, and in turn us, to explore their people, their place, their culture, their lives. ?€??€?The pieces you'll see are lifestyle pieces that use music to reach a richer truth."

There are a lot of citizen journalist projects out there, including some with laudable purposes like watchdogging governments. But SPINearth is the first global music service that I've seen that feels like one big, constant party. As opposed to YouTube, where there is a ton of professional footage of live concerts, Hartles' site puts the fans in charge -- "to tell us what music means to them."

"This is the future of publishing," Hartle says, "Not the industrial-age printed magazine." Then, quoting somebody he met at a conference recently, he adds with a chuckle, "After all, Gutenberg had a nice long run."

(Note: I worked with Tom Hartle as the first editor in chief of 7x7 in 2001 and 2002.)