Working Title

Jeff Jarvis of CUNY writes in the Guardian about how hyperlocal bloggers could become a city’s source of news. Jarvis directs the New Business Models for News Project at his university.

Bottom line: after three years, we project that a blogger could hire editorial staff and advertising help – citizen salespeople who help support the citizen journalists – and net $148,000 out of $332,000 revenue. That’s a conservative estimate when you consider that a community weekly paper in such a town probably earns between $2m-$5m.
— Let’s build an ecosystem around hyperlocal bloggers Guardian 14 Sep 2009

As a part of our Working Title project, I have been reading A Sacred Trust | Nelson Poynter and the St. Petersburg Times by Robert N. Pierce.

Much of the book focuses on Nelson Poynter’s life, but many sections deal with the development of the Poynter Institute and the unusual structure of its ownership of the Times — the part we are interested in.

One paragraph I encountered described the different structures Poynter and his lawyers considered as they planned for the eventual transfer of ownership that would maintain the man’s ideals.

Throughout the early 1970s, idea after idea was explored, picked apart, and usually shelved or flatly rejected. Among them were ownership by the pension and profit-sharing fund, by Yale University or some other educational institution, even by a sole proprietor to whom it would be given. One recourse never taken seriously was public commercial ownership, to which many newspapers [...] were turning. Poynter was dead set against it. He was terrified that stockholders might try to shape editorial decisions.
— A Sacred Trust Chapter 10 In Pursuit of Forever

It is interesting to see how similar structural changes that we are analyzing and are being suggested now were considered decades ago.

• On a merger of Harvard and the Times 19 Feb 2009
• The end of the press baron 2 Jul 2009