Start an Independent Newspaper?

Necessity being the mother of invention and all, one solution to the abysmal state of the mainstream media is simple: start more independent newspapers. Seriously.

There are many, many skilled journalists out there. BC could support many small, independent newspapers around the province. They would dovetail nicely with the independent internet journal sites like Tyee, Rabble.ca and Public Eye. It would be challenging and difficult, yes, but is our democracy worth it? Something to think about...

Good article

Well done. This article gives a really good map of the options. The crux of it all really is:

Be disturbed, get creative

CBC problems

You might care to reel that one in a bit and look to the hundreds of millions pulled from the CBC budget by that paragon of fiscal propriety Paul Martin...

If CBC is mired in debt it's because of a LACK OF STABLE FUNDING over time.

Let's Reimagine Journalism

You should know that Jack Etkin has started a street newspaper in Victoria and locally.
It is outspoken and dedicated to countering the spin of the CanWests and other corporate news outlets.
It is called "The Bridge".
First issue 16 pages and will be published quarterly. A magnificent effort at $1/copy.
Jack needs all the support he can get.
He can be reached at .

Non Profit Is The Only Way To Go

The Guardian and The Independent are both non profit highly successful and with wide circulation.

Your right , It's a sad day when

It's a sad day when "journalism becomes a job,,,

rather than an art ...!!!!!!!!!!!

---- perhaps the "melt-down" ,

will produce the same kind of "journalist"
simular to Amy-Goodman...

>> for those of you who don't know <<<

Amy was on a small network of 5 pacifica radio station's
( pacifica = public radio )

Amy was fired from the station she worked at....

( ya , stupid WBAI mgt , FIRED her ... ) doh...!

Her fan's , banned together and gave her a "Internet-space" ...

The opperation grew with-in week's ,

and she was given a space in an abandon-fire-house, ( one week and ) one block a away from "Ground-Zero" in new-york city.

---- wow ----

Nobody saw that coming ,

including the radio-station mgt
who were trying to SELL the station,
BECAUSE of people like Amy-Goodman ect...!

( some body TOTALLY missed the boat there )

--- and to this day , THEY still do ----

Go to Amy-Goodman's website

http://www.democracynow.org

and see what happen's when your
STUPID BRAIN-DEAD Corprit Master ,

is in-capable of seeing the reality of FREE-EXPRESSION ...

----- sorry for shouting, but
if Amy-Goodman , didn't get fired in the first place ...?

would the "people's hand", have - had the FREEDOM to Switch the dial ,

and tune into something better...?

:{- Doh ...!

---- Bottom Line ...? ------

The "People" want news.!

Not "gitz" .

News is not Minister's cutting ribbon's...

News is asking question's about the program's they TAX-CUT , to get to the ribbon cutting in the first place...!

News has to focus ....!

like Amy-Goodman had to focus......!

ted... ( street-news-paper's are actully sold to "real-people" , on the streets of victoria BC )

I saw it happening at Bastion Square , 1:30 ~ 2-pm (on nice days)

Lefty, say what?

"“ INM NOW CONNECTS WITH OVER 100 MILLION CONSUMERS
WORLDWIDE EACH WEEK, PROVIDING THE FOUNDATION FOR A UNIQUE
AND UNRIVALLED COMMERCIAL MEDIA NETWORK ANCHORED BY
WORLD-LEADING TITLES SUCH AS DAINIK JAGRAN, THE INDEPENDENT,
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD, THE IRISH INDEPENDENT AND THE
BELFAST TELEGRAPH”
Once again, it is my great pleasure to
report to shareholders another year of
strong growth for INM. This year we are
reporting record revenues of €1.673
billion and record operating profits of
€349.2 million, reflecting your Group’s
unrelenting focus on, and track-record
in, driving shareholder value. Growth
has been achieved in our core publishing
businesses, through our expanded
outdoor advertising presence as well
as in online and education, where we
project further exciting developments in
the future."

Not non-profit.

The Guardian a different animal but:

March 31, 2009
"Earlier this month MEN Media Ltd announced that it was to cut 150 jobs at the MEN and its 22 weekly newspapers in Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire. The company also plans to close all but one of the offices of its weekly titles such as the Wilmslow Express and the Rochdale Observer.
...
Carolyn McCall, chief executive of MEN Media's parent group Guardian Media Group, has defended the Manchester job cuts by saying that the group's regional newspapers, once massively profitable, are now loss making.

She said in a memo to staff: "The downward trajectory is clear, and it's getting worse.

“The division has, in fact, now been making an operating loss for several months.

"If the management team of GMG Regional Media takes no action to reduce costs, these losses will soon become completely unsustainable, which could lead to the end of the business and its newspapers altogether."

Now there's trouble:
* Guardian journalists pledge support for regional colleagues
* Two closures and 95 jobs axed at GMG south regionals
* MEN Media says compulsory redundancies 'unavoidable'

23 March 2009

By Dominic Ponsford

Journalists on the Manchester Evening News and its associated weekly titles have voted to hold a strike ballot despite a warning from editor Paul Horrocks that industrial action could only cause more damage."

Change is coming - everywhere.

People Want the News

And the more that is done to suppress the news the more demand there will be for the news especially given the economic clinate so there definetly is a big market for it. Why do you think government and corporations work so hard to suppress it. So its almost does the opposite than its intent. Media sees news as entertainment while its readers and viewers see it as being necessary to keep them well informed of the issues affected their day to day existance.
Cooperatives could be used to help media distribute the costs as they share the headlines and other costs associated with running the news. I know they have radio cooperatives and that has given voice to many so why not the newpapers where they share in the costs? Anything to bring down the costs will bring up the news.

And Let Big Media Fall

Big Media deserves to fall because they are much of what is wrong as big business and governments who spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising in a year need not be bothered reading anything contrary in the news. But au contraire how do you get the news?

There are plenty of choices BEFORE you pick my pocket

As a media brat for over 40 years, I readily admit it is getting harder to find the truth in our "textured" media community, but the reality is you will find what you are looking for. If you love Gordon Campbell and all he stands for you will find the sources of your inspiration. Google your favourite words and deeds and presto. Media to beat the band, any band.

Before you suggest we need to give our tax masters more of our money so they can ship us the latest in "proven" idealism, why not let the public do the walking, talking and choosing of where they want to go and what they want to hear.

The Tyee extends their principles through a media tree fertilized by "choice" funding. They will or will not survive based on gifts and advertisers.

As a reader I have the choice, at only the cost of my time, and perhaps some paronizing of Tyee advertisers, but it is my choice: not Stephen Harper's nor Gordon Campbell's nor Carol James'.

If you think there is something out there you are not getting, write about it. Send it to all the media outlets, and heck, someone will probably pay you for it.

If it is good new, I might too!

And turn off your TV...

Starting a small newspaper remains a viable need for democracy. And coupled with that is cancelling your cable subscription. Millions of people stare into that blue screen opiate, giving up their free time to the few. China fought against the UK's force delivery of opium for good reason. We will need to do the same by turning our back on commercial TV and becoming re-engaged in our communities.

I don't see much

I don't see much re-imagining of journalism suggested in the article. What I do see are ideas about new business models. I don't mean that in as harsh way, I just have not seen much that I would consider a re-imagining of journalism around lately in all the discussions about it's future.

I have seen attempts at crowd sourcing and other means of including the readership but it doesn't seem to scale very well or guarantee better journalism.

Enough griping from me a positive thing I have been impressed with is the Guardians use of video.

Here is a particular example.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/apr/02/g20-protest

It's relatively short, well shot, with good editing and there is no voice over or a talking head interpreting the story.

This doesn't mean that it's without a bias or particular POV in anyway but it's hardly something that one would see on the nightly television news.

The fact that this video stepped outside the traditions of broadcast video and that it came from a "newspaper" journalism site is great.

While I have no idea about the business model that supported the creation of this piece I do think it shows what can be done when journalistic channels and journalists do rethink what they do.

I do acknowledge the great need for new ways to support journalism. I just hope that in the great re-imagining the possibilities for change exist for more than just the funding.

It won't be so easy...

The model for journalism may not be working but don't count out investor's ability to find a way to make a profit just yet...

We have a small window of opportunity to make the sweeping changes that need to come to create a framework that will support well funded, high quality journalism: the established sources are weaker (not dead) and the internet is providing a cost efficient way to reach large audiences. When there's money to be made, people will find it in a real hurry... whether it's still on dead trees or the internet.

The medium doesn't really matter. Cheaping out on journalism adds to the bottom line for corporations as the general public doesn't seem to respond to the essential quality that is needed to sustain a healthy democracy. The Walrus doesn't attract the same readership as Maxim or Cosmo...

These kinds of discussions need to expand so thank you for raising the issue...again. I hope this movement has some legs.

For my part, I have to say that I think we need to look at co-ops or public trusts to run the newsrooms. To tell you the truth, I think that the current proprietors of "Big Media" would be not that unhappy to lose their involvement with all this messy public interest in providing unbiased news. Hand the news over to a public trust and just get on with making as much money as they can. No irate advertisers to deal with and public accusations could be deflected to the trustees. All very clean. It's not perfect but it's the best direction that I can see.

I think that depending on labour or charitable individuls is jumping out of the pan and into the fire. I don't want to be beholden to labour anymore than I do advertising support from corporations. I think that "charitable individuals" will easily morph into "individuals with vested interests" once it becomes a significant advantage to "support" a media source.

So: we have an opportunity. I hope we can seize this moment. Go Tyee go! Go Democracy Now go! Go Rabble go!

And tell your MP you want MORE money to go into CBC! As a taxpayer, I'm very willing to pay for a well funded, unbiased, public source of news.

A modest proposal

I'm not sure the old model is actually dead. Perhaps its just the way its packaged?

After all, newspapers have grown immensely and most of it is not that informative yet it costs money to print it all and transport it.

I'll throw out an idea here.

First, let's assume there was a chance in hell the Left would take over something like the National Post. If they then dropped everything except Section A, didn't take advertising and filled that section with actual news and commentary you might have something that would appeal to more people and be something they'd be willing to pay much higher subscriber fees for. Kind of a "CBC Radio" version of newspapers.

The old model that is dying is not necessarily newspapers, it could just be the current advertiser supported bloated format.

More unsourced quotes R/Man?

I thought you'd decided to stop doing that.

If you expect me to read material you've pulled out of context from other on-line sources at least take the trouble to reformat them and put them in your own words.

Personally I think if newspapers are going to survive in North America it'll be along the lines Frank mentions.

However, my real hope is that internet users of news sites will be forced to start paying micro-charges every time they access news websites. Such fees could be collected nationally through internet service providers and channeled to the originator of the news - in such a way there would be budget to hire and keep on a news reporting and investigative staff and payment could be directed precisely (on a country by country basis) to the news providers.

Furthermore, by de-linking news from advertising the far from benign influence of commerce would be removed from the news business – or, at the very least, minimzed.

Erratum

should be 'minimized' above

Micro charging sounds good

If there was some system whereby readers could be subjected to small charges for reading the "real" news, that could be worthwhile pursuing. Something about that sounds too simple to actually pull off in a real enterprise.

GWest, do you think we could get people to pay when they could get it for free? Would enough people be willing to pay for well investigated stories? Maybe...

Trouble is: the "real" news that is deemed to be useful by some of us in this discussion is probably not in as much demand as we'd like to think.

Frank: If we made the front section of the National Post into a "CBC version" of the newspaper, would it attract more readers than it currently does? I'd buy it, but I don't believe the general readership would improve.

The advertiser driven model craves readership above all else. People with money on the line (for many years) do everything they can to attract the most readers for the least bucks. Like it or not, agree with it or not, they know what works... and it isn't exactly what you and I think best serves democracy. It's something that better serves the bottom line.

I agree with you, Frank. The old model is not dead. Financially speaking, I have no doubt the ad driven juggernaut will come back and continue to inflict journalism with its biases. Is spite of all the current problems, it won't conveniently die for us and go away. The money finds a way to survive.

We have to find an alternative that can effectively compete against the corporate Goliaths or... an idea that these giants might even embrace. I think both of these challenges will be er,... tough to develop. Impossible? I certainly hope not.

I'm not so concerned with any complicated right wing conspiracy to subvert democracy in the "Big Media" boardrooms. (Notwithstanding the conspicuous influences of Conrad and the Aspers, et al which have hardly been a secret)

The "Big Media" execs are just in a system where they are paid to maximize the returns of the people who have put their money at risk. For the mostpart, they would be happier if the ground rules were changed so that they were not in a conflict of interest against the public need for a free press.

I think the press freedom issue is better served with less of a left versus right undertone. We need the left and the right to work towards building a forum where they can duke it out to their heart's content.

So: in the framework of a (mostly) capitalist system, the challenge is that we need a model that will align corporate interests with the public need. Either that or throw out the whole capitalist idea a la Noam Chomsky... but I don't think Canadians are quite ready to go there yet.

Monk

I'm not certain - the charges would have to be small on an individual basis, but collectively the amount of funding that could be generated would be huge. Of course there would be problems to work out - what happens to blogs where people re-post material copied from primary news producers like the New York Times or the Times of London?

There has been a lot of discussion in tax forums about applying some kind of a tax to sales transactions, financial transactions and the like - but this is usually thought of as a cost added to a sales or service contract and not related to the simple act of 'clicking' on a particular news site.

I've been using the internet since its inception and, for the first half-dozen years I had to pay a monthly subscription fee to get Full New York Times site access (it was free to those in the US but it wasn't worth it to me to use a proxy server to get their content).

For people who are serious about keeping well informed I suspect there would be little or no resistance to a click tax being added to their ISP bill every month and, in the interests of democracy, I don't see how we can survive without professional news gathering.

We certainly don't need the plethora of news re-broadcasters we have today - all pretty much sponging and spinning off the same few primary sources.

On the possibility of reforming the advertising base for news funding, I think that's going to happen anyway - simply because the current model has already failed.

Do you ever look at ads on the internet?

I certainly don't - any more than I do when I leaf through the pages of the G&M.

Which, the G&M I mean, seems to me to be in the process of evolving into a much better paper than it was as little as three or four years ago.

The decline and destruction of the CanWest/Global brand doesn't seem to have permitted the Globe, at least, to merely rest on its laurels.

The other fundamental problem I see is the disquieting tendency for people of a certain age (say 30 and younger) to be pretty much entirely ignorant of the broad range of issues and opinions that reading a good paper on a daily basis ought to have provided them with.

If the movement toward internet news continues to affect younger people in this way, then we better hope SOMETHING else comes along to stop the slide into ignorance.