At 09:10 PM 8/7/01, John D. Giorgis wrote:
>Nick, however, was lamenting the lack of competition among daily newspapers
>covering local news.
At 04:09 PM 8/7/01, Nick Arnett wrote:
> > At 02:58 PM 8/7/01, Ronn Blankenship wrote:
> >
> > Smaller cities (under 1,000,000 in the MSA):
> >
> > Salt Lake City has the _SL Tribune_ and the _Deseret News_.
>
>Their JOA goes back decades. The Desert News has sued the Tribune for
>stifling competition through the JOA. The News has rights to buy the
>Tribute outright in 2002.
>
> > Birmingham, AL has the _Birmingham News_ and the _Birmingham Post-Herald_.
>
>The Post-Herald is barely surviving. It is failing despite a JOA, as has
>happened in many other cities (which is why people in Denver say they are
>fighting a monopoly in their town, despite the appearance of two papers).
>
>Second, it's hard to argue that there are any truly national newspapers in
>this country, partly because the old pearl, "All politics is local" is more
>true in this nation than just about anywhere. Strong states rights call for
>strong local media, I believe.
While you may have a point about economics and advertising (in both SLC and
Birmingham, the two newspapers published in the same city are located in
the same building and share the printing presses, though the two SLC papers
at least did have their names on separate entrances to the building, unless
that has changed recently), as you admit, the readers are mainly concerned
with the local (city & state) news coverage. In the two examples I gave
above, there is certainly a difference in news coverage (particularly
local, but also national) between the two papers: in Birmingham, the
_News_ is noticeably more conservative than the _Post-Herald_, and in SLC,
the _Deseret News_ is the LDS Church newspaper while the _Trib_ is the
Gentile paper. Admittedly, many educated people living in the area read
_both_ papers in order to get both slants (as do people in Denver and
Atlanta, but it's been long enough since I read those papers regularly that
I can't speak to the present slant of their news content).
--Ronn! :)
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I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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