Greg T. Spielberg aka GTS aka Louis Taymans aka the guy behind Streetwater, is an urban journalist to the full extent, whether he will admit to it or not. He is the tidal in a wave that is taking over the what, where, and how people choose to get their news from. He calls Twitter a “blog.” He freelances for multiple websites, manages Streetwater, is on the phone interviewing someone about Asian economics while reviewing a photoset from an up and coming artist. His Twitter feed is full of links that will educate you on everything from social media to the best freestyle rappers of all time to backdoor information on Americas education system. The guy is like putting your iPod on shuffle and getting a solid mix of everything. SO was glad to steal some time from Greg, and get his thoughts on all things new media, art, Streetwater, and a perfect NYC day.

Serial Optimist: What up Greg, glad to have to the chance to ask you some questions about Streetwater. First I’d like to get introduce you, the guy behind SW. You grew up on Long Island, then went to Bowdoin College in Maine, spent some time in Vail, CO, then went to one of the top journalism grad school programs at the University of Missouri. You’ve been writing and editing since high school. Tell us a little bit about how your interests and passion for what you want to write about have changed over time. In high school you wanted to be a “…..writer,” then in college a “…..writer,” grad school, etc. Did it take failures in other variations of writing to end up where you are now, which is focused primarily on commerce and business? Is commerce and business what you enjoy writing about?

Greg T. Spielberg: After college, I wanted to move to a ski town with a legit newspaper. My buddy lived in Vail, Colorado so I moved there but they had no reporting jobs. A copy editor position opened up, and I interviewed, got it and took it. Instead of writing, I designed pages, decided where stories would go, edited copy, wrote headlines. It was a 1 pm to 11 pm job four days a week so I got to ski all the time, too. The copy-editing desk at a smallish newspaper is like a delta. Or a harbor. Everything flows through the copy desk – writing, pictures, cut lines, headlines, design, advertisements. I got to see the interplay between ads and edit, where businesses wanted to present themselves, which businesses ran ads on what days. It was fascinating to see the newspaper holistically instead of just the editorial part. It’s unavoidable when you’re looking at pages 10 hours a day, and I became enamored.

I also got a chance to learn what a community expects out of its newspaper. Vail is an isolated mountain town, but it’s also a world-known vacation spot, right? So you have all these restaurants, concerts, events, real estate agencies, bars, ski shops, and clothing stores trying to reach an audience that’s only in town for the week. They need to know what’s going on right away, and a newspaper is the best bridge between visitors and local businesses. Newspapers serve two needs at once, and that connection between business and customer is huge. Meanwhile, 90% of those businesses were for leisure activities. It got me into the relationship between business and culture.

At the same time, this was 2005, we started posting content to the Web. After getting over the initial “What the hell is this, and why do I have to do it!?” I realized how much better Web delivery is than print delivery. Every thing I was learning about print was out the window including the business model. My passion for print moved to a passion for the transition from print to Web and how to support a healthy, engaging journalism company. That became my favorite story.

SO: What are your thoughts on new media? Newspaper is near death. Magazines are near death. You can argue that if you’d like, and I’m sure you will as a true spirited journalist, but my question is, do you believe traditional media, and more importantly, traditional print journalism, is dead?

GTS: The transition from old media to new is a funny one. Traditional print media was social media before social media. Pick up three products – a Nike sneaker, a newspaper, and a sandwich – only one has names written all over it. Pick up four more – Nintendo, skis, newspapers, and a movie poster – same thing. It’s been that way forever. Newspapers are it. The average newspaper probably has 500 names, phone numbers, addresses, pictures, town names, updates and profiles in it. We just paid reporters to find everything out and charged advertisers to put their profile near our reporting.

Professionals having exclusivity is done, though, obviously. Thank you so much for that. Life is so much richer when everyone tells their own story and builds from there. Half the stuff in the newspaper was straight facts – calendar of events, weather, classifieds, minutes from town hall meetings, stock quotes, an update about what the president said yesterday in Des Moines. A) That’s not that interesting. B) Why pay someone to produce that? You don’t have to. Now that the Internet is around, people with day jobs can contribute as much as they want either within an online publication or on their own site.

The business model question is being answered already. Newspapers and magazines are expanding into other social businesses. Rolling Stone has a restaurant, Conde Nast has one in the Middle East, Wired is opening a store, Mashable throws events, Gawker throws art parties, Cleveland Mag throws art parties in museums, Anna Wintour invented Fashion Night Out. Journalism companies are realizing that people didn’t necessarily read them because the information was so important. We just wanted to interact with people around us, even if that meant voyeuristically through paper. Connect people. That’s the business model. Advertisers will always, always pay to join a party.

SO: On to Streetwater. Tell us what exactly Streetwater is. It’s described on your Facebook page as “an exploratory crew of storytellers,” but would I be correct in saying all the stories are actually told through photography? What is the general theme of Streetwater? What makes you work daily at it, what is the vision, and what separates it from other sites dedicated to photography?

GTS: Paul Hagey, who does Wednesday and Friday posts, and I want to bring people together. I don’t see a reason to get hung up on calling Streetwater a journalism company or a blog or a magazine. Place doesn’t matter; people do. I just want to bring good people together who are willing to share their experiences. A third of SW is from Eastern Europe and Belgium, a third is from the South and a third is from the Northeast and Midwest. We’ve had people from Scandinavia, the Balkans, Long Island, Texas, Canada, Mexico, Argentina all contribute. I love that. Diverse people telling diverse stories.

Photography is the starting point. It’s universal, pictures translate to every language, so it’s easier to unite people around pictures than words. They’re also easier to consume and produce. Sitting down to write a story might take three hours, but photographing and editing takes half an hour. Plus, you can look at a picture multiple times. I find myself going back through SW stories because I love the pictures so much.

The vision – I see Streetwater as a journalism organization that’s based on the people involved, not the product we’re producing. Right now it’s a bit flat – in terms of content variation. Every day looks similar. Soon we’ll start having different types of content – radio, longer stories. Then I want to incorporate businesses into the model. I want to give startup companies a place to share stories from their business rather than themselves. So, for instance, I have a friend who’s starting a butter company. I’d like to know what Jonas White’s Better Butter Company is reading or doing.

There are some great photography sites out there. The Denver Post and Boston Globe have fantastic photo blogs. Pictory Magazine tells great picture stories with a bit more meat on them. I’d say Streetwater at this point is most similar to Pictory.

SO: You have chosen a unique way to market Streetwater. Most businesses, magazines, blogs, whatever you want to call it, would use a social media platform such as Facebook to help promote an actual site, or even a blog, yet you have decided to start the whole Streetwater model on Facebook first, and build a fan base through your Facebook page. Was this something you planned in advanced? Some might say just having a Facebook page as your business front makes it less legit, others, and I would say it’s tactical forward thinking on setting a strong foundation for when you do launch your site. I’m jumping ahead, is they’re a Streetwater site coming in the near future?

GTS: Facebook is like leasing. It’s definitely less legit from a business standpoint. But SW isn’t a business, it’s a crew of people. That’s what I want to build. Get good, diverse people together and start applying themes for them to interact. I don’t have the money or the time to build a Web site; eventually, hopefully we will. But I wanted to get started, and on FB I don’t have to worry about traffic, design, filling space, all those things that come along with building a site. Once we do have a site, absolutely, it will be already full and lively and connected to the people who helped build it – whose content is already on FB. It’ll be live right from the start.

SO: How do you think you make a hobby, a passion, like for me Serial Optimist, for you Streetwater, into more than that? Into a business, if you will. What are some of your make or break rules to turning a dream, into a career, using online as your only platform?

GTS: Online-only is a business if you’re selling products, subscriptions or advertising. I’m not in love with any of those. I think the best way to turn an online hobby into a business is to create content for online, bring people together there and then create offline events where you charge entry or sell product placement to companies. Everyone wants to take part in a bocce ball tournament or a fashion show. Set one up and then charge businesses to make an appearance.

SO: You use the phrase “commerce and culture in a young economy.” How does that apply to Streetwater’s overall theme?

GTS: I know people who think art is pointless, messy and poor, and people who think business is irresponsible, cruel and ravenous. I don’t see either that way. I wanted to blend business and art right off the bat. Young economy is a shout out to the fact that we’re one of five or six generations living through the biggest shift in history. Going from industrial to digital makes the world young again because every business, city, country, lifestyle is being re-imagined. Young is optimistic, too.

I think almost everything can be placed under business, art and a time period. Nothing’s excluded, and I want Streetwater to be totally inclusive. There’s no cliques, politics, sensationalism, fabricated conflict, snark, irreverence. That stuff separates. I’d like Streetwater to bring people together.

SO: You have quickly developed a large fan base and following for Streetwater, why do you think that is?

GTS: The premise helps it grow. If everyone can contribute and get the satisfaction of being on display alongside nice work, there’s a good incentive. We don’t write about celebrities or “trends” or observations about mass culture.

1. Pictures — 70% of time on Facebook is spent looking at pictures and reading the text below it. We play off what people already love doing.

2. Stories – We try to get stories rather than pair the picture with technical photo information or a literal description of the scene. We work with contributors on almost every story, asking them to go deeper into why they took the picture, what was going on and what the back-story is. I think that makes a big difference.

3. Community promotion – Hitting up the right people to recommend SW on FB to friends. Reaching out to friends who are in journalism or media already is more receptive to that little extra work. Plus, the favor is always returned, and it leads to stronger relationships with those people, too. I end up helping them out with their passion and business and get to know more about what they’re doing, too.

4. Twitter. It’s the fastest, most efficient way to explore what people are doing out there and then contacting them to contribute.

5. Facebook. It’s free and viral.

SO: Could you do what you’re doing now, anywhere else but NYC?

GTS: I wonder about that all the time. Yes, I could, but I wouldn’t grow as quickly. Living in the New York is living in the future. We built 30-story buildings side by side by side on an island. That’s a crazy idea! When you get so many people together, its cutting edge nonstop, every second. I like that a lot, and the speed sweeps you up in its current. Plus my family is here.

SO: What websites or blogs do you check on a daily basis?

GTS: Serial Optimist, Streetwater, Twitter, Facebook, New York Times, fantasy football and then Slate or Huffington Post or ESPN depending on my mood. Twitter brings me to a lot of stories about journalism, community, international stories I’d never see, photographers, pictures. It’s my favorite blog by far.

I read a lot of print, too, cause I’m always on the subway. The New Yorker is timeless. I just read a story about Van Jones from April 2009, before he was getting forced out of the White House.

It’s just as good today. I read Businessweek, too, regularly. They don’t waste any time with B.S. or fluffy, long stories. The Economist makes it into the mix once in awhile too, less and less.

SO: Describe your perfect NYC day.

GTS: Sunny, breezy summer day at Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park with a dozen well-mixed people. They always take on a life of their own.

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SO Note: (Greg has interned at Businessweek, writes for Poets & Quants, and recently wrote a story for Harvard’s Nieman Lab. To contact him or contribute to Streetwater, contact him at gregtspielberg@gmail, Check Streetwater out here, follow SW on Twitter @streetwater, and follow Greg @gregtspielberg)

Photo by Cal Crary

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Tags: Greg T. Spielberg, Interview, NYC, Photography, Streetwater