PRINTMike Martin: The community investigator
Columbia Heart Beat blogger
David Kennedy
A science writer and editor of Columbia Heart Beat , an online newsletter.
November 12, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Age: 47 | Time spent in Columbia: 12 years
Since he was a teenager, Mike Martin has been actively monitoring those in power. He’s an assertive character and loves to question authority. In fact, he’s so passionate about keeping power in check that he does it for free.
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- Making waves in a landlocked state
In November 2005, Martin started the Columbia Heart Beat blog as a way to communicate with members of Columbia’s North Central Village, where he owned several properties. Today, Columbia Heart Beat claims more than 5,200 subscribers.
Running the watchdog Web site is a time-consuming commitment, but it also allows Martin to raise his two children while his wife, Alison, works at MU. His devotion to the site stems from his concern over what he views as a lack of journalistic scrutiny in other media outlets.
“I don’t see investigative reporting — that willingness to question power and authority,” he says. “It’s distressing.”And so he digs for information himself. As a seasoned freelance journalist, he’s had practice hunting for stories. Throughout the past 20 years, he’s written about 1,000 articles for mostly science and technology publications. He’s been a full-time journalist for the past eight years, and he currently writes the “Citizen Journalist” column for Columbia Business Times.
Martin estimates he’s broken more than 30 stories before other media outlets in Columbia and says other local media use his blog as a tip sheet. But he recognizes that some, particularly the authority figures he questions, find Columbia Heart Beat controversial.
Last January, a colleague told Martin about what he called a “secret meeting” where the mayor, city manager and chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs Committee, among others, schemed to pay some City Council members and remove others they believed were too “activist.” So Martin wrote two posts igniting a small blast of contention within the city’s leadership and the public.
Columbia Heart Beat has evolved into what Martin calls an online newspaper. The weekly publication arrives in subscribers’ e-mail inboxes, and responses come in letters to the editor (or Blogitor-in-Chief, as Martin titles himself) rather than anonymous comments that a regular blog might feature.
The site gains modest revenue from paid announcements and an online donation box launched in October. Martin anticipates expansion for the site, but the future of free media is a major worry for him.
“There’s a huge world of digital media out there,” he says. “We just have to figure out how to keep up with it.”
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