PEN-L message, [Pen-l] Re: how much would it cost us to buy the SF Chronicle?

The Hearst Co.'s threat to close the SF Chronicle is, of course, a strategy to crush labor unions. In my view, institutions with investment capital such as credit unions and labor unions will in the near future have a chance (imperative?) to fund news outlets as the current owners step away.

Seth

Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:33:35 -0600
From: Robert Naiman <naiman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Pen-l] how much would it cost us to buy the SF Chronicle?
To: Progressive Economics <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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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