[Pen-l] how much would it cost us to buy the SF Chronicle?

[Robert Naiman <naiman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Shouldn't part of the government's economic recovery package be a
rescue for the nation's big city dailies?

And shouldn't the rescue consist of buying them and taking them nonprofit?

A federal government entity could be set up, "the corporation for
public print journalism," and it could make no interest, long-term
loans to communities to take over their community newspapers and run
them as nonprofits.

The framework would be: a big city daily serves important social
functions, and it might not be the case anymore that this institution
can be run on a profit-making basis, and so what.

All the progressive periodicals - the Nation, the Progressive, In
These Times - operate at a loss and always have. The difference is
made up by donations.

Nonprofit big city dailies could take donations and grants.

The corporation for public print journalism could also make operating
grants and grants for special projects, as the corporation for public
broadcasting does today.

It would save a lot of jobs, and could moderate the anti-labor bias of
the mass media.

One can imagine different models for running the papers, and different
models could be tried locally within certain national parameters of
regulation. But if it were up to me, the newspapers would be largely
autonomous within broad parameters. The goal would not be to turn them
into left papers. The goal would be to preserve them as community
papers. There would be oversight in terms of a board representing
different sectors - labor, government, readers, donors; they would be
expected to have gold-plated labor and community relations and model
environmental policies, but editorially, within broad parameters of
fairness, accuracy, and balance, they would be largely left alone.

How much would it cost to buy the big city dailies that are near the
auction block? If a coalition of local government, labor, and
community groups wanted to do it and had access to financing, wouldn't
it be feasible? One reference I saw recently in the press indicated
that some papers were on the market without buyers. Is this not the
time to buy them and take them nonprofit?

-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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