Time for a US national midmarket paper?
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 9 October 2006 at 09:04
Tags: Journalism
Michael Kinsley, the Guardian’s US editor-at-large, has an interesting take on the turmoil at his former paper, the Los Angeles Times.
To recap: The Los Angeles Times’ publisher has been sacked for backing his editor in refusing to make further staff cuts demanded by the parent Tribune company of Chicago. Lalaland bigshots are up in arms about the apparent evisceration of their community’s once-great paper by its faraway owners — and the Chicago lot are threatening to break up the company by the end of the year. Some Hollywood moguls have hinted at interest in becoming local owners — and some more radical approaches to local citizen-ownership have been suggested.
LA journalists are angry about another proposal to merge their staff with that of the other Tribune papers to cut costs. But Kinsley thinks the company’s idea has merit, albeit for different reasons. The only way for a paper like the LA Times to retain its influence in the 21st century would be to have a national audience, says Kinsley.
So, Kinsley suggests, why not create a single national newspaper out of the entire Tribune chain?
[I]magine the Tribune chain as a single newspaper with separate editions in each of its cities. Call it the National Tribune. Or the papers could keep their separate identities, but carry a “Tribune” insert or wraparound with national and international news. This paper would start out with towering dominance in two of the nation’s top three markets (Los Angeles and Chicago) and a solid position, via Newsday, in the largest (New York). It would even have a toehold in Washington (thanks to the Baltimore Sun). All this, and Orlando too.
Like the British papers, this new national paper could go after a demographic slice of the market instead of a geographical one. It could aim for the currently unoccupied sweet spot between USA Today and the New York Times, or it could take on the New York Times directly.
An American national press has only slowly begun to emerge in the past few decades, first with USA Today and then the gradual expansion of the New York Times’ distribution network. The sheer size of the country historically created a press based on a patchwork of regional monopolies. But in the age of the Internet, Kinsley argues, a newspaper that covers the world but only has a regional distribution in a few counties of southern California is “superfluous”.
Alas, says Kinsley, an internationally-significant National Tribune does not seem to be what the Tribune Co in Chicago have in mind.
Tags: Journalism
