I was reading where Sam Zell of Tribune applied for a loan modification for his company. Tribune owns TV stations like San Diego's KSWB Fox-5. Along with the Chicago Tribune, and The L.A. Times, and other media properties. Zell's company has been in trouble ever since it bought Tribune a year and a half ago. In that time Zell, and his captains have managed to fire half of the Chicago Tribune staff. It is also facing an federal investigation of its ownership structure, and more staff cuts are on the way. Zell called the Tribune purchase, "the deal from hell." Unfortunatly the economy soured just after his purchase of Tribune, and now he is facing the "bankruptsy from hell."
I'm not a financial guy. I do know that the world has changed, but are we changing with it? I want to examine ideas out there of a financial model for media properties. The talk lately has been of creating news content, and having viewers or readers pay for it. Perhaps an on-demand model for local news. Another is to follow the lead of the Huffington Post. The company is raising money to fund an investigative unit of its own. Still others like The Voice of San Diego is asking for donations to help them cover the cost of doing journallism in town. Cities from Chicago to Seattle, to San Diego have been creating these start-ups called "hyperlocal news." EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger, and Patch offen collect articles and blogs, and mix in data from local government agencies to give people a slice of news.
Since we're talking money. should news make a profit? Local television stations have a responsibililty to the community to offer a public service to its viewers. Should news be a profit center? Years back News programs made a huge profit, now they are loosing money. The subject was an interesting topic on a popular industry website called tvspy.com. Comments ranged from "news was taken as a civic responsibility that a TV station license holder had for its community of license. It was never intended to be profitable." to "Employees cost money, cameras, and news cars cost money. Who's going to pay?" The model we're talking about is a relic from the past, and the days of heavy government regulation for media. "TV companies were given a monopoly to the airwaves in exchange of operating in the public interest." Was another comment, my question is, should we re-examine that old concept?
I talked about "hyperlocal sites" earlier. If these sites rely on organizations to sponsor them, could they provide un-biased, and fair reporting? What if that site had to do an investigative story on their sponsor? Also, many of these sites rely on simply cutting, and pasting content from newspapers, and TV. If newspapers, and TV news stations go under, who would supply news to some of these sites.
The point is, everybody deserves access to news information. Good, accurate, and useful information supports a healthy democracy. Who's going to pay for it.
