Newspapers were "the media" in the 1880s, full of excesses, competition and sensationalism... but maybe they inspired a model for future media, as described in a century-old utopian novel. Or maybe there's a more recent model in a Connecticut shoreline daily's special circumstances. And maybe there's hope for a big experiment in the fall of one of the nation's largest newspaper chains.
Jay Rosen at NYU speculates on things that inspired local owners could do with the former Knight-Ridder newspapers that the MClatchy chain plans to sell, in his blog item, Twelve Newspapers in a State of Nature.
"All the ex-Knight-Ridder newspapers could become active agents in their own future. Exactly what they never were when HQ was in Miami and San Jose. Q: Where is HQ now? And who is there to get orders from? Who's going to tell you: no, you can't use a newspaper for that?
" [PressThink]
The fact that one of the newspapers for sale is in Silicon Valley sounds like a great opportunity for a benevolent software tycoon (or a gang of them) to create the first true 21st century newspaper, publishing online and off, merging professional and amateur content in a pro-am Fourth Estate with ideals of a well-informed community served by a watchdog press.
Part of Jay's argument for local ownership is that big corporations have insisted on larger profit margins than a community-minded newspaper really needs.
I hope some of the interested buyers talk to my old neighbors at The Day in New London, Conn., the only newspaper I know that is owned by a trust dedicated to community service. From its "about" page:
"Without stockholders, The Day is insulated from
customary stockholder pressures to hold expenses down. The Day must make
a profit like any other business, but it is at greater liberty to spend
more of its revenue on newsgathering operations than other newspapers
its size. The newspaper historically has paid higher salaries and
maintained a larger staff than comparable newspapers."
Another model to evaluate would be the utopian one suggested by Edward Bellamy in a "futuristic" book written in the 1880s, Looking Backward from 2000 to 1887. In it, a 19th century man awakes in 2000 to find new economic marvels, including a new way of supporting newspapers:
"The people who take the
paper pay the expense of its publication, choose its editor, and
remove him when unsatisfactory. You will scarcely say, I think,
that such a newspaper press is not a free organ of popular
opinion....
"Supposing some of my neighbors
or myself think we ought to have a newspaper reflecting our
opinions, and devoted especially to our locality, trade, or profession.
We go about among the people till we get the names of
such a number that their annual subscriptions will meet the cost
of the paper, which is little or big according to the largeness of
its constituency... "The subscribers to the paper now elect somebody as editor...
He manages the paper just as one of your editors did, except that
he has no counting-room to obey, or interests of private capital
as against the public good to defend. At the end of the first year,
the subscribers for the next either re-elect the former editor or
choose any one else to his place. An able editor, of course, keeps
his place indefinitely. As the subscription list enlarges, the funds
of the paper increase, and it is improved by the securing of more
and better contributors, just as your papers were."
Sounds simple. But Bellamy's paper was embedded in a non-capitalist utopia that guaranteed those subscribers annual incomes for being in "the national service," something that in the 20th century would have people shouting "communism!" or "fascism!" The world he describes has a lovely innocence and logic to it, which is why it's a utopia, not a reality. I'll leave it to some killjoy political scientist or economist to explain why it could never work.
One last thing... Bellamy's utopia eliminated money. How did his 20th century citizens pay for those papers? With another wacky invention of his. He called it a "credit card."
3:02:27 PM 
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