Bottom Line Communications

Newspapers Should Not Be Owned By Media Conglomerates
Hartford Courant
Susan Campbell
   Let me get this straight: In order to save America's newspapers, we should give Big Media more freedom of ownership? Is that right? Did I hear that correctly?
   Because if so, I want to make sure my passport is stamped. I'd hate to get caught in Bizarro World without the proper papers. Earlier this month, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin J. Martin, said the 32-year-old ban on cross-ownership in the media � whereby a company cannot own more than one media outlet in a market � is pass�.
   He proposed lifting the ban in larger markets to allow media companies to spread out a little bit. Except media companies are already plenty spread out, thanks, with their ownership of many fine newspapers, including this one.
    Newspapers are struggling for a variety of reasons, in no small part precisely because we are owned by large conglomerates that treat the ideas that newspapers peddle as one would treat everyday products like a hammer or a screwdriver. Only we're not making hammers or screwdrivers.
     The FCC might vote on the changes as early as mid-December. The logic Martin uses is that newspapers have been struggling for roughly a decade.
     But they've actually been struggling for two decades, when large companies began in earnest gobbling up the cash cows that once were newspapers. And then, when the financial returns weren't as great as they had hoped (the new owners were slavishly devoted to the bottom line), the owners began taking cost-cutting measures that included shrinking their staffs.
     Maybe they started first with a kinder, gentler shrinking, buyouts that were offered to older reporters, or to employees considered on the periphery, or those who were considered more trouble than they were worth. We lost a steady stream of smart and qualified people here at Mother Courant. Perhaps you can recite their names with me.
    But the powers that be wanted more, and the layoffs began. Layoffs at The Courant were no more draconian than at any other company, but it was shocking in a business we once thought to be an important cog in the wheel of democracy. Trends and political regimes will come and go, but you'll always need a newspaper to explain them to you. Or so we thought.     
     Over time, readers noticed that their town meetings weren't being covered, or that their school board votes or election results weren't making it into the paper anymore, and many readers fell away, relying instead on the newfangled Internet or local television stations.        
    With shrinking readership, advertising revenues dropped, and lo and behold, newspapers were said to be struggling. On that, Martin is right. You'd be struggling, too, if you continued to operate under labor strategies that can never, ever work in this business.
     As it turns out, under Martin's proposal, the restriction on ownership of both newspapers and television stations would remain in Hartford, a not-large market. The Courant's parent company, Tribune, which has put itself on the sale block anyway, evidently would have to unload either America's oldest continuously published newspaper or the company's local television stations, WTXX, Channel 20, and WTIC, Channel 61.
    With respect to my fellow corporate-trough diners in TV, I pray they sell us. I'm spending the holiday thankful I have a job, and I'm praying that very soon I am holding down that same job but answering to someone else.
     I hold out hope that local ownership is a big part of the answer to the malaise that affects American newspapers. I am thankful that I work for a corporation that gave me a good dental plan, but I am willing to trade my teeth for a (local) owner who gets it.
    And inasmuch as prospective local owners have only suggested they're interested, but none has seriously stepped forward, I think the next answer is to start up a collection and buy the damn thing ourselves.
      Hey, everybody! Let's put out a newspaper!