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10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America

Not exactly a sports business topic, but indirectly it is and to my mind a very important one. Doug McIntyre of the excellent stock and investing block 24/7 Wall Street recently posted his best guess as to the 10 most endangered newspapers in America. Doug has been following the newspaper industry closely for several years and been blogging about its difficulties regularly. His list is both interesting and deeply troubling. This country is paying little attention to the demise of print journalism and is not considering at all the public policy implications of the silencing of so many independent, professional journalistic voices. Sure, there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers, but we should not deceive ourselves that bloggers can or will ever replace professional journalists.

A free society is dependent on a free and independent press. The closing of so many newspaper and magazines will inevitably lead to fewer and fewer voices and greater consolidation of those that remain. As media becomes concentrated in fewer hands (yes Rupert that means you) the independence that a free society depends on becomes significantly threatened. I don't think anyone wants government intervention to change the game or to subsidize one outlet over another but we, as a people, need to begin a conversation soon over how to save our media outlets. One alternative may be moving them online to a subscription base, which seems to be the direction that a few newspaper outlets are trying. An ad based online publication doesn't seem to be working, at least at this stage. The New York Times online is bleeding money and if the Times can't make advertising work online, it's doubtful many others can.

This post was not intended to be a rant on the changing media landscape. I really just meant to link to Doug's post so that you could see which newspapers might be leaving us. I guess I got carried away and I'm just going to leave it like that and let y'all go at it and me in the comments. Here is Doug's post and the list.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on March 10, 2009 (boomark / email).