Legal Research

Stronger Roles for Libraries as Local News Aggregators?

Some pretty dire predictions on the health of the newspaper industry.

One report by financial ratings firm Fitch put out a report predicting that "several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010."

"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the Chicago-based credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment."

So, if you're in a public library and your town is potentially dependent on the McPaper or a major national (If the NYT survives), what could you do? Can you use RSS feeds to assemble a local news source from smaller independents? Can you surf the local blogs and aggregate? Would your town miss local news in print? or have they already gone 'e'?

Seems like an opportunity. You might even be able to hire some of the folks being put on the street by the big conglomerates as they lay off folks.

Stephen

Update: It's creepy when I write these posts and thmn read that the Tribune Company (Chicago Trib, LA Times, ) filed for bankruptcy today.

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).