Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

Daily Progress Sold to Berkshire Hathaway

Published by Waldo Jaquith on May 17, 2012 in Business and Meta News. 19 Comments Tags: , .

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is buying Media General’s newspapers, which means that the Daily Progress is changing hands. It was 1995 when Media General Bought the now-120-year-old newspaper from Worrell Enterprises, a local, family-owned business, and by most measures, the newspaper has not fared well since. The entire print journalism industry has been in a slump since advertising dollars began moving online a decade ago. It’s not clear what the future financial model will be for local journalism, and the whole industry seems to be waiting for somebody to swoop in and figure it out. Berkshire Hathaway—technically, BH Media Group—is buying 63 newspapers for $142M.

Buffett already owns a few newspapers, including the Buffalo News and the recently purchased Omaha World-Herald, and owns the largest share of the Washington Post. Buffett has said that he sees newspapers’ value as a community hub, and that their most valuable function is providing information that isn’t available elsewhere, something that many newspapers—including the Progress—have been struggling with. He’s also said that it’s a mistake for newspapers to give away so much material online for free.

What all of this will mean for the Progress remains to be seen, but it’s a fair guess that this is good news. Media General has basically been supervising a slow collapse of their print properties, with no apparent ability to arrest or reverse that collapse. Buffett is perhaps the deepest of deep-pocketed investments out there, known for shrewd, long-term, community-focused thinking. The future of the Progress is looking a lot brighter.

Western Bypass Bids a Rorschach Test

Published by Waldo Jaquith on May 11, 2012 in Government, Taxes and Transportation. 7 Comments Tags: .

The construction bids are in for the Western Bypass, Sean Tubbs writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow, but it’s not yet clear whether they’re good news, or bad. Seven bids were submitted, ranging from $136M to $214M, all of which exceed the $125.6M budget. A Virginia Department of Transportation spokesman says that they’re all within the entire $139M design-build budget, but Tubbs points out that pretends that none of that additional $13.4M engineering budget has been spent when, in fact, $9.3M of it had already been spent as of June 17 of last year. That seems to make it pretty clear that all of these bids are beyond the state’s financial means, unless VDOT chooses to allocate additional funding to the project.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board is scheduled to name the winning bidder of the design-build contract on June 20, which is also when the public will be able to see the design that was submitted.

Council Passes Pro-Marijuana Resolution

Published by Waldo Jaquith on May 8, 2012 in Government and Politics. 5 Comments Tags: , .

Last night, City Council passed a resolution memorializing the General Assembly to decriminalize marijuana, Lisa Provence writes in The Hook. The resolution was originally also to instruct the Charlottesville Police not to enforce the state law prohibiting possession, but that bit was stricken, leaving it only as a comparatively toothless request to the legislature. It passed on a 3–2 vote, with Mayor Satyendra Huja and Kathy Galvin opposing it.

Chain Store Selling at City Market

Published by Waldo Jaquith on May 5, 2012 in Agriculture. 182 Comments

The Great Harvest chain has set up shop at the City Market, Graham Moomaw writes in the Daily Progress, and that’s got some local farmers upset. The market, overseen by the city, is meant to connect customers with local food producers, and over 100 folks have their names on a waiting list to get a spot at the popular weekly event. The Great Harvest Bread Company is a Montana-based chain, with hundreds of locations across the United States, established on a philosophy of providing more local control to franchisees than most chains. The city says that they were not aware that Great Harvest was a chain, although it’s not clear what difference that would have made in the application process. The owner of the local franchise says that there’s nothing wrong with allowing chains into the farmers’ market, while a couple of critics argue that, by that logic, Subway or Panera could set up shop there.

This debate has unfolded at farmers’ markets across the country, with some markets remaining dedicated to selling local produce, and others turning into something closer to weekly open-air markets for chains. Which approach is better depends on what each community thinks that the purpose of a farmers’ market is. We may be about to find out what the purpose of our farmers’ market is.

Progress Editor Leaving for UVA

Published by Waldo Jaquith on May 4, 2012 in Business and Meta News. 7 Comments Tags: .

McGregor McCance, managing editor of the Daily Progress for seven years, is becoming the latest employee of the paper to depart for UVA. McCance is going to work for university spokeswoman Carol Wood.(Note that the position of managing editor is the top editorial position at the Progress—there is nobody with the title of, simply, “editor.”) Today was McCance’s last day. The Progress doesn’t yet have a replacement for McCance.

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