False Prophets of Profit

A friend who came into the newspaper business several years ago from a career in broadcast media was surprised at the poor quality of the newspaper business' trade press, compared to other industries. Ironically, the journalism industry just didn't seem able to support decent trade magazine coverage of itself.

But Editor & Publisher, the industry's leading journal, has really stepped up its game over the past few years, and the magazine and its Web site now provides generally sharp coverage of the changes roiling the industry. It's even willing to write critically and sarcastically about some of the industry's titans (OK, some of them are easy targets), and that would have been unheard of at E&P a while back.

All this is by way of background on an excellent new piece in E&P about the various alternative business models being bandied about these days for newspapers. E&P's Mark Fitzgerald thoroughly dissects such notions as not-for-profit models, antitrust exemptions and newspaper endowments, and basically finds that none of them even begins to resemble the magic bullet that many people are hoping for. In fact, when looked at closely, some are quite far-fetched.

Fitzgerald also correctly makes the point that many of the people advocating these alleged rescue plans—usually journalists rather than business people—don't really seem to really understand the business they're part of. He underscores this with a great quote from a veteran industry executive:

"It never ceases to amaze me, some of the wild thoughts and assertions that come from those who work with us and those in our industry," says MediaNews Group CEO William Dean Singleton. "Somehow, those who write and edit the news are just so ..." he pauses, searching for the right word, "so ... divorced from the reality of the business."

Touché. Fitzgerald's comprehensive, clear-eyed analysis is a real credit to E&P, and, like Clay Shirky's great recent essay, a must read for anybody who's thinking about the future of the news business (note that I didn't say "newspaper" business). And it shows, again, why the search for new business models needs to be inclusive—and not just a reflection of the wild dreams of ink-stained idealists.

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[Donna Trussell]

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