A plan for newspapers

Seattle Times: The Minneapolis Star Tribune emerged from bankruptcy reorganization last Monday. It has a future. So do America’s other metropolitan newspapers.

Recently, Rep. Carolyn Mahoney, D-N.Y., held a hearing in Washington on the future of newspapers. If we had been there, here is what we would have said: Newspapers have a future, but a different one than was envisioned in the 1980s and 1990s.

Those were high-profit years, temporarily wonderful for the people in journalism but unfortunately wonderful also for those whose only interest was to make money from journalism. They were out-of-town, financially minded investors, often rapacious to the point of injury.

Internet

Then came the Internet, which siphoned off classified advertising, and the recession, which pounded everyone. Newspaper companies started to fail.

Financiers are now saying the business model of newspapers doesn’t work. Their leveraged-buyout, absentee-owner model doesn’t work. We think a lower-profit, lower-debt, all-local model does work.

Most readers still want their newspaper in print, so they can scan it, carry it and clip it, and the printed paper works as it always did.

If we were talking to Congress, we might ask for some policy things. Our industry cannot carry as heavy a tax load as it once did.

But we believe newspapers can support themselves once this recession is over, as long as they stay local: local news, local features, local entertainment, local opinion, local service and local ownership.