Five predictions regarding Fayetteville’s newspaper merger from Matthew Petty | CF
Clipped Fresh — By Christopher Spencer on October 23, 2009 at 1:24 PMFive predictions regarding Fayetteville’s newspaper merger | MatthewPetty.org.
FROM THE POST: There are two newspapers in my town, the Morning News and the Democrat-Gazette (aka the NWA Times). There’s a merger though, and many are worried that the switch to a one-newspaper town will be a blow to our democratic process, but I think moving to a one newspaper town is actually going to be good for our community.
COMMENT: I pretty much agree with all the points he makes. My sincere hope for Fayetteville and the larger area is that specific news niche sites will pop up, like a city hall tattler, a courts beat site, an education-specific blog, local foods, etc. In some sense, they will be organized around the tradional news beats at a newspaper, but owned and administered by writers who will make low- to middle- wages (No one is gonna get rich, but they might earn a livelihood) and rise and fall based on the merit and attention of what they write.
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2 Comments
You nailed it in your comment… [producers will] “rise and fall based on the merit and attention of what they write.”
The newspapers have had a monopoly on “real” news for a too long, and it’s about time more competition entered the market.
Competition is the American way. It’s good time for experiments and I think readers are up to the challenge of getting more news from more sources and triangulating their own opinion from multiple sources.
I can see some loose nonprofit online news publisher association in the state forming in the future that works as watchdog on the accuracy of the blogs to tell readers these are trusted sources, these are bad actors, holding to some journalistic standards among its members.
People would be free to publish anything that want within the law, of course, but being a member of such an association would lend credence to the blog and also give blogs a voice at the legislative table during the General Assembly.
Newspapers are a powerful block with strong legislative pull and if they continue to struggle they are going to try to get new law written that favors them on the state level. I don’t begrudge them this really. It’s self-preservation. My hope is that newspapers can become less and less defined by the physical medium and more by the service they provide.
I think such an association, if formed correctly, could be a good asset.
Personally, I’d like to see multiple folks blogging in every community in Arkansas, covering all the news minutia that newspapers with strained budgets can no longer cover.
Putting Gutenburg in everyone’s hand serves us all.