Possible new ownership models for newspapers
Posted by Lindsay Berrigan on April 27, 2007 at 12:09 PM
As newspapers battle with falling print circulation and ad revenues, Boston Globe reporter Dan Kennedy says that the solution for the Globe and others could be in finding a new business model to escape the profit demands of Wall Street – perhaps going non-profit.
Like many other US papers, the Globe is owned by a large corporation, in its case, the New York Times Company. “Publicly traded companies in general have come under fire for their management of newspapers,” says Kennedy. “Increasingly, the typical profit margins of corporate-owned newspapers—20 percent or higher—are seen as inconsistent with well-funded public-service journalism.”
So what are some other options that, in Kennedy’s opinion, could improve on this model?
-Ownership by a local businessperson. In Philadelphia, local advertising executive Brian Tierney is attempting the save the Inquirer and Daily News. Though his success has been negligible, Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, thinks these types of ownerships could work. “It might be an investment group that maybe none of us have heard of, with a real visionary sense of what you want to do with media in this climate,” he says. “You want to watch out for the vanity project.”
-Non-profit ownership. This model has worked for several news organizations, including the Associated Press and the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, owned by the Poynter Institute. Roy Peter Clark, vice president of Poynter, says, “What’s cool about the Poynter Institute owning the St. Petersburg Times is that, because we’re concerned about the quality of leadership and the ethics of ownership, we’re able to take the long view of success and profitability rather than the short view.”
How to implement this model? Some observers have discussed the possibility of tax incentives so that big companies like the Times Co. would reap better financial benefits from selling papers like the Globe to nonprofit organizations. However, this would have to go through Congress and would probably not occur unless big companies were poised to sell papers at very low prices.
The most important thing, many say, is to simply preserve quality journalism in the face of revenue problems.
“Ultimately, what’s important isn’t the form but the content,” says Dan Gillmor, founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media. “My goal, and I think a lot of other people’s goal, is not to preserve newspapers but to preserve great journalism. I think it would be wonderful if we could preserve newspapers, because I love them. But that’s really the secondary question and not the important one.”
Source: MassInc. through Romenesko at Poytner Online
So what are some other options that, in Kennedy’s opinion, could improve on this model?
-Ownership by a local businessperson. In Philadelphia, local advertising executive Brian Tierney is attempting the save the Inquirer and Daily News. Though his success has been negligible, Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, thinks these types of ownerships could work. “It might be an investment group that maybe none of us have heard of, with a real visionary sense of what you want to do with media in this climate,” he says. “You want to watch out for the vanity project.”
-Non-profit ownership. This model has worked for several news organizations, including the Associated Press and the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, owned by the Poynter Institute. Roy Peter Clark, vice president of Poynter, says, “What’s cool about the Poynter Institute owning the St. Petersburg Times is that, because we’re concerned about the quality of leadership and the ethics of ownership, we’re able to take the long view of success and profitability rather than the short view.”
How to implement this model? Some observers have discussed the possibility of tax incentives so that big companies like the Times Co. would reap better financial benefits from selling papers like the Globe to nonprofit organizations. However, this would have to go through Congress and would probably not occur unless big companies were poised to sell papers at very low prices.
The most important thing, many say, is to simply preserve quality journalism in the face of revenue problems.
“Ultimately, what’s important isn’t the form but the content,” says Dan Gillmor, founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media. “My goal, and I think a lot of other people’s goal, is not to preserve newspapers but to preserve great journalism. I think it would be wonderful if we could preserve newspapers, because I love them. But that’s really the secondary question and not the important one.”
Source: MassInc. through Romenesko at Poytner Online
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Thanks for the kind mention. In the interest of accuracy, I am not a reporter for the Boston Globe -- I was writing about the Globe.