Future of Journalism Embedded in Six Stories
Today at Romenesko the future of journalism can be seen in six separate stories:
Story 1: McClatchy Co., one of the nation’s biggest newspaper companies, reported sharply lower profit and revenue for its third quarter Tuesday and said it would take an accounting charge to reflect the poor conditions in the newspaper business and its falling share price.
Story 2: MinnPost.com (and a paper version known as MinnPost in Print) will launch November 8, it was announced today by Joel Kramer, CEO and Editor of the not-for-profit startup.
Kramer also said that in addition to the $1.1 million of previously announced major gifts, MinnPost has now raised more than $107,000 from 220 member-donors. This surpasses MinnPost’s projection of $75,000 for all of 2007, Kramer said. The smallest of these donations is $10. The largest is $36,000 — received recently from the Martin and Brown Foundation, a local family foundation.
“MinnPost will be about great journalists doing great journalism,” Kramer said. Six editors will oversee contributions from more than four dozen journalists, including two Pulitzer Prizewinners.
Story 3: As the Inter American Press Association, which focuses on freedom of the press in South and Central America, holds its general assembly in Miami, the Sun-Sentinel takes the moment to … say to hell with national and international news.
Story 4: The third wave in American journalism—that of the foundation press—may be taking form now thanks to Bay Area billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler. Waving $10 million that they promise to replenish annually, the Sandlers have founded the nonprofit ProPublica to produce investigative journalism. (Usual suspect the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is also chipping in some money to the ProPublica kitty, as are the Atlantic Philanthropies and the JEHT Foundation.)
Today’s New York Times reports that ProPublica will soon hire 24 reporters and editors to create one of investigative journalism’s largest staffs. Based in New York City and led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, ProPublica promises to produce quality investigative journalism and give it—not sell it—to media outlets.
Story 5: NEW YORK — E.W. Scripps Co. plans to split into two parts, becoming the second media company in recent weeks to isolate fast-growing assets from the troubled newspaper sector.
The move would create one company with Scripps’ highly profitable cable-television networks and its shopping comparison Web sites, and another with its newspapers and local television stations.
The decision reflects the length companies will go as souring sentiment on the newspaper industry dents stocks prices of companies exposed to the sector. Shares of Scripps, which generates roughly one third of its revenue from
newspapers, have fallen 15% this year.
Story 6: Belo presents details on spinoff of newspapers (This is an interesting story with lots of newspaper and media publishing details as well as how having no debts on the newspaper side, it can be more nimble in making changes.)
Actually there are a few more stories linked at Romenesko that tell of layoffs etc. , but enough for one day.
