Newspapers won't die. They'll survive, along with local TV and radio news broadcasts, by publishing and showing content produced by others. Those old media brands still have value in a fragmented world. I live within walking distance of Hollywood, so forgive the metaphor: The publications and broadcasts will be like movie studios - marketers and distributors.
Journalists, the folks who make the movies ... er ... news, will work for content-production companies.
Here in Los Angeles, a journalistic production company might do well. The size of the place, and the number of outlets, makes economies of scale possible even for a local news production operation. A network of local community reporters - including some with nontraditional training - could provide coverage of all the region's cities and counties for any number of newspapers, radio stations and TV. The outlets would have to pay a fee for the journalists' service, but much less than it would cost to field their own newsrooms. A journalist who negotiates the right contracts with enough outlets could make a decent living. Any stories that don't sell could go up on their own Web sites, which could sell a few ads (every bit of revenue counts in this model) and build awareness of their reporters in the community.
One place to start might be with the Spanish-language media. Those TV and radio stations are adding more hours of news, but have fewer reporters to produce stuff. A cadre of young, energetic, cheap, bilingual reporters might do this work.
The problems?
1. Hostility from older, expensive reporters they would be replacing. (Unfortunately, they're on their way out anyway).
2. The difficulty of raising start-up capital. If you have some of the latter, please let me know.
Joe Mathews, a former LA Times reporter, is an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
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