> Basically, what you're saying is the standard narrative, that free content on the web has destroyed the traditional media model. What I'm saying is the traditional large media houses have totally failed at embracing this model, and converting themselves into efficient producers of it. If they had shown more imagination, maybe we'd be reading information-packed Live Wires on NYTimesWire interspersed with ads, instead of Tweets interspersed with ads.
I actually don’t disagree with you at all. I think many of the newspapers have only themselves to blame. They were entirely unwilling to embrace digital until it was too late. But for many of them, it is too late. Because they are dead or owned by hedge funds that want to maximize profits and cut costs, and local reporting, even for stuff like city council meetings, is expensive because it has a smaller aggregate audience than just doing national stories. I think the challenge is that even before the collapse of print, you'd had an extended period of rollups of various newspaper owners thanks to eased regulations that has only accelerated over time. Gannett/GateHouse, all of the Tribune drama (which could be its own book), for two more recent examples) effectively means that most local papers are owned by a major conglomerate or hedge fund. I won’t even get into any of the pension stuff that has been horribly mismanaged (Poynter has had great coverage of that), but this report [1] from UNC Chapel Hill is five years old but does a great job showing how ownership of local papers has collapsed over the 2000s and how many papers have died. (It is somewhat ironic that one of the most important endowments/sponsors of journalism grants/research/education is the Knight Foundation, named for the newspaper magnate and half of once super publisher Knight Ridder, which was bought by McClatchy in 2006. McClatchy filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and was bought by a hedge fund in a bankruptcy auction. Meaning, Knight itself hasn’t existed in a material way in 15 years.)
Now, to be sure, as I said, those local papers did themselves no favors. And Knight Ridder and some others were more savvy about technology (McClatchy not so much), but it hasn’t worked. Or at least not at scale. There have been many attempts, but most of it has come from the wrong place. You had initiatives like Tim Armstrong's Patch, which was the idea of turning every local area into a blog, similar to that LiveWire concept you had. Patch expanded fast and was quickly sold along, with Armstrong to AOL, where as CEO Armstrong poured millions and millions into it, before having to accept defeat and sell it off at a massive loss. Patch still exists, but it’s much smaller in scope than what was its plan.
Then you have all of the attempts of Tribune to modernize, which have mostly been disastrous (Tronc). Google Digital First Media and read about how the foxes conspired with some of the hens to raid the henhouse [2]. Gannet has tried too and failed. But you’re not wrong that more innovation was needed from smarter people.
The New York Times did it. In 2014, their current publisher (who at the time was learning the business from his father and as a millennial, was one of the younger people in a power position at the paper), famously commissioned and was the lead author a digital innovation report [3] that excoriated the Times' strategy and seriously set it up for the success it has had over the last seven years. That’s ultimately how he got the publisher job in 2016, several years earlier than people expected. But the Times had a much stronger financial situation than most other papers and the gravitas and hubris to be innovative and take chances. That’s why it’s the Times. (It’s the Yankees of media companies)
I don’t mean to be dismissive. My own bias is def towards the tech/digital side of media, having never worked in local news and spending my whole career in digital (I graduated from college in 2008 and never even thought about going to print), but as someone who has been obsessed with tech and media my entire life, this is an area I’ve been watching for as long as I can remember. CJR, Poynter, Nieman, The Knight Foundation and others are actively trying to fund and incubate ideas for the future of news, especially at a local level, but it’s difficult. The Colorado Sun is one rare example of a local community paper, born from the ashes of the hedge-fund cultures, that has managed to break through, but it’s just a tough business.
[1]: http://newspaperownership.com/, http://newspaperownership.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.... alt link https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07....
[2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/hedge-fund-vampire-a...
[3]: https://www.scribd.com/doc/224608514/The-Full-New-York-Times...