Outside the Box Thinking - turn the Baltimore Sun into a non-profit local paper

[Stinky The Clown]

The Sun was a great paper, but has recently gone from owner to owner ..... and become sadder and sadder. Currently, it is owned by the Chicago Tribune's group. And they're bankrupt.

Up comes a group of local investors who want to take the paper over and turn it into a non-profit. This can happen if legislation introduced by Maryland Senator Ben Cardin. Overall, the model is not unlike the original plan for public broadcasting ..... not unlike it, but not the same, either.

Here's the story from a local teevee news organization:

http://wjz.com/local/baltimore.sun.2.967098.html

Local Investors May Take Over Baltimore Sun

>snip<

As more newspapers stop the presses across the country, eyes are on the Baltimore Sun, currently owned by the Tribune company that declared bankruptcy in December.

"Something's got to happen with the current model of the newspaper. It isn't working," said former County Executive Ted Venetoulis. He is leading a group of 20 local investors willing to spend millions to buy the Baltimore paper. There's encouragement they can make it happen, but as a non-profit.

"And we thought that since our intention was to put the paper to make it better, to improve it as much as we can, why not do it as a non-profit institution?" he said.

Non-profit status would be similar to public television. The paper would be tax exempt. Any contributions would be tax-deductible but advertising would still be sold and any profit would go back into operations.

>snip<

more at the link, above

[snot]

1. Who are these local investors?

Why did the Sun go from owner to owner? The Sun DID used to be an excellent paper; I noticed that much, even though I live in a completely different part of the country. Did its performance go downhill with changes in ownership and approach to the news?

Do the new investors have any relationship to any existing or prior ownership? Who ARE they?

Remember, the nonprofit Red Cross was taken over by conservatives some years ago and went from being a first-rate aid agency to being an at best ineffective one that basically collected a lot of cash that never seemed to go where it was needed. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, go to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x22805 , hit "View All", and search the page for "Red Cross" -- that should give you a start.)

So I think there are a lot questions that need to be answered in order to understand what's happening.

I'm all in favor of thinking outside the box. However, I happen to believe that what's wrong with the media, including newspapers, has mostly to do with the fact that we've allowed conservatives to break a system that used to work, and that what's needed is not necessarily to invent some whole new system but to restore the one that served us so well for so long (i.e., for starters, restore restrictions on consolidation of media ownership, as well as the Fairness Doctrine), and then make some strategic changes to address technological and other developments.

John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney recently had an excellent, in-depth analysis in The Nation, at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/nichols_mcchesney .

(Pls pardon, I found a number of edits were needed, since I was trying to cover a lot quickly.)

[1]

2. "Something's got to happen with the current model of the newspaper. It isn't working,"

something is happening with the current model of the newspaper. it is dying. much like "the current model of buggy whip manufacturers" happened with the introduction of the horseless carriage.

past attempts at non-profit buggy whip manufacturing did not make it. this will not either.

individual paper printed copies of outdated news is a dead concept.

deader than dead...