Combat journalist, web consultant, milker of goats

Is it about sav­ing jour­nal­ism, or sav­ing the news­pa­per indus­try? And are the two inseparable?

This morning’s somewhat-​ballyhooed Con­gres­sional hear­ing on the future of news­pa­pers — fea­tur­ing an indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive, an indus­try ana­lyst and an aca­d­e­mic — did lit­tle to clear the air on that ques­tion, but raised some inter­est­ing points.

U.S. Rep. Car­olyn Mal­oney (D-​NY), who chairs the Joint Eco­nomic Com­mit­tee hold­ing Thursday’s hear­ing, last week sub­mit­ted a bill that would allow news­pa­pers to reor­ga­nizes as 501 ©(3) non-​profit groups, ded­i­cated to the pub­lic good. A sim­i­lar Sen­ate bill is pend­ing. In her open­ing remarks Thurs­day, Mal­oney empha­sized the impor­tance of jour­nal­ism to our democ­racy.

When the JEC asked for reac­tion to the non-​profit idea, it got a quick brushoff from News­pa­per Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica CEO John Sturm. We’re not here to talk about that, Sturm said. 

He did talk about it a bit in his open­ing state­ment, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as poten­tially use­ful in lim­ited sit­u­a­tions, but dis­miss­ing it as a solu­tion for the indus­try as a whole. And of course, it’s Sturm’s job to lobby for the industry.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }