On May 25, 2009, at 11:05 AM, b_s-wilk wrote:
Main problem with many of the good newspapers has been conglomos-- ownership by corporate entities that have no interest in publications other than making a profit. A 10% profit for a newspaper is OK, but conglomos want 30% profit. Solutions? Start with local ownership, force conglomerates to break up so news can be local again. Profits are OK, but the combined nonprofit/profit model of the St. Petersburg Times works well, and keeps it local.
Another example of excessive greed ruining a good thing. As you say, newspapers were at a stable place between expenses and revenues. Owners made a reasonable living. The greedy conglomerates wanted more and didn't care about the long-term consequences of their short-term greed. They started to cut and for every dollar they cut they lost over a dollar in revenue. The math is inescapable.
PS: The Petersburg Times is owned by the Pointer Institute, a non- profit that specializes in journalism. They are now in the process of selling off Congressional Quarterly. I wonder what that is about. It will be a shame to see CQ go the way of the Tribune Cos.
Online solution? How about a clearing house for newspaper content where you pay a monthly or yearly subscription to view stories in a variety of papers. When you log in, each newspaper gets paid by keeping track of the articles you view, not by your ID, only by number of readers for each article. Can this be done? Might work.
News for the well off and no news for the rest of the population? I don't feel good about this. I think advertising supported models can work. But running an online news service using the same model as a paper-based publication is not a good fit. They need to figure out how to work with the new medium. Compare to the growing pains of the early days of radio or television. In the beginning people did not know what to do about those mediums too.
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