...the search for a business model that will allow newspapers to survive. Here's one of the more interesting columns on the subject that I've come across recently, inEditor and Publisher
an industry publication.
Will sites like Huffington or Slate replace the daily papers? One of the best arguments against that proposal comes from newspaper veterans who say they'll believe it the day they see a reporter from one of those sites sitting next to them, covering the local school board meeting.
The strange part is that the potential replacement for the papers already exists in virtually every city and town in the country: the local TV stations. They have the time set aside for news, the basic setup of a news gathering organization, and a presence online. But instead of embracing that journalistic challenge, they continue down tabloid road, doing flashy "special series" that just repeat the same information from the last time the topic was a "special series". "Meth is the cause of 90% of the crime in your neighborhood" blared one. Uh, maybe property crime, but certainly not all crime.
Imagine if a local station swore off the self-promoting stories designed to make them look good and hired some real newspaper reporters, actual journalists, and then allowed them the time (time to cover and research, and time on-air) to do the stories right. Not cheap, but TV News viewership is down, so what they're doing now isn't working especially well. Think 60-Minutes on the Statehouse level.
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]
[UPDATE: And maybe Flyp if the future of magazines?]
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