“Local” means everyone…
Just in case you’ve forgotten what the business of a newspaper chain really is, along comes a reminder:
With the newspaper industry frantically searching for new readers and revenues, certain segments of the ethnic press have become popular targets in recent years. From Knight Ridder’s Vietnamese newspaper in San Jose to Gannett’s Hispanic publication in Phoenix, major media companies are scrambling to plant a flag in the growing ethnic marketplace. That strategy appears vindicated by a June survey conducted for New California Media, an association of more than 700 ethnic-media organizations, which concluded that 29 million adults in the US prefer their own ethnic news sources to the mainstream press.
The news: The New York Times Company is launching a free weekly newspaper in Gainesville, Florida for the African-American community.
Should I laugh? Should I cry?
I think part of the decline in newspaper circulation in the United States is directly attributable to a desire to shed unwanted readers, i.e. those that advertisers don’t care to reach. This has typically meant poor and minority communities. So what happens when certain minority populations all of a sudden become a market? Well, news companies are left scrambling. The ill will news companies created over the years by not adequately covering poor and minority communities means that advertisers now need new advertising venues. If the Gainesville Sun had done a better job of local coverage of the entire community, this silly (and doomed) venture wouldn’t be necessary.
L O C A L
It means everyone.
Journalism loses its way when it forgets that its responsibility as a provider of information to help make civic life work is grounded in the community in which the news organization resides.
