Steve: You’re right. Early papers were partisan — but still had to be sufficiently profitable to survive. Freelancers need steady work, too, as well as someone to pay them, so I doubt I’ll see the same freelancer covering my local school board on a regular basis.

Thanks for your comments, gentlemen.

It appears that the owners of early news papers were driven more by a political idealolgy than profit, though profit was necessary to continue publishing. I thinnk that rather than opine the death of the ‘buggy whip manufacturers’, efforts should be directed to understanding how to more efficiently and economically utilize the new vehicle of information distribution. I would suggest that a ‘news paper’ today can be constructed by a world-wide consortium of networked reporters. Look at some of the ex-pat blogs reporting out of China, or anywhere else. If you can aggregate the ‘reporting’, I think you can develop relatively low cost news collection system, that could operate at relatively low margins and make a profit. On the other hand, Craig’s List and Ebay absorb a lot of the potential classified ad revenue, so that the network’s product/output has to be,as it always has in the news paper industry, compelling to achieve the audience needed to provide full time employment for the contributor’s/writer’s/reporter’s. This is not an easy task, but I would argue that with the right ‘components’, it is achievable.

I’ve completely abandoned print news–it’s advertising, not journalism.

I’m a full blown capitalist who believes that you have to spend money to make money.

I’d also rather have a perpetual 10% return than a risky 30% return.

Jeff

Jeff