Media General is planning for a post-newspaper business model, Richard Craver writes for the Winston-Salem Journal. The media giant—andDaily Progress owner—has made it known that all of their newspapers are for sale, and a recent regulatory filing forecasts revenues premised on the assumption that they’ll strip the company down to its television stations and electronic media components. Media General claims that multiple parties have expressed interest in purchasing their newspapers. They’ve said that they’re interested in selling all of the properties off together, or individually, meaning that it’s possible that another big media company could take ownership of the Progress, but it’s also within the realm of possibility that somebody local could buy it.
Media General purchased the Daily Progress from the Worrell family in 1995, along with the rest of the Charlottesville-area family’s Virginia newspaper properties.
A rolled-up and twisted newspaper
Makes excellent fire-lighting taper.
For learning the news,
Computers, we use;
The digits come out of the vapor.
I’m wondering if this means that we might return to the days of small, locally owned newspapers.
If the DP were locally owned and carried a reasonable amount of local news I might just resubscribe!
Dan, how about if it were not locally owned but did carry local news, would you resubscribe?
The issue for me is one of time, I don’t have enough of it to devote to reading the morning paper. I did for a few years when I was first out of college but lost that habit a while back. Now my kids never see a paper being read in the morning so how likely are they to subscribe?
We get a weekly newspaper with local news (Greene County Record) but no dailies.
jmcnamera: Maybe, if the reporters are local at least.
There is something about local ownership, a pride in the local community, that seems missing when the paper his owned by a big company out of, say, Richmond.
Charlottesville Tomorrow should buy it- they have people on their board that could afford it.
Interesting idea. Charlottesville Tomorrow already writes all the best stories in the DP.
I don’t think new owners could screw up the paper anymore than Media General has(along with screwing its employees).
Worrell, while not strictly local, at least had some interest and concern about the community. But MG- all about the bottom line and presenting a rightwing editorial policy.I know people who stopped subscribing due to the conservative bias when MG took over. Endorsing Gilmore over Warner for Senator- that was the last straw.
I agree that reading an actual newspaper over morning coffee and breakfast is a nice tradition that seems on the decline-but deserves to be revived.
The Progress was a non-local paper when established 1892. There was concern back then that local news would receive short shrift. But the paper proved itself over time. Only in recent years has the decline been so dramatic.
Just look at Sunday’s front-page top story “City to remember ‘lost neighborhood'” Apr. 15. They want to build a monument to Vinegar Hill. In 2007 the Progress reported that Jennifer McKeever had talked to residents who have seen their “neighborhoods” (plural) disappear. Vinegar Hill is not the only lost neighborhood in the city, and not the only one lost to urban renewal.
Why would the Progress imply Vinegar Hill is the only “lost neighborhood”? Is it a mistake? The Progress archives document more than one neighborhood being “lost”. The Progress management has been informed that urban renewal is bigger than Vinegar Hill. But the word never makes it down to the reporter.
They don’t want to hear it. So the Progress has partnered with Facebook to allow only its members to comment. Why would it make good business sense to exclude all potential customers from commenting other than Facebook members? In 1962 there was a 200th anniversary edition with a historical inset. Watch this 250th anniversay unfold. What happened to our history?
(Thanks Waldo for letting me post here what whould be posted to the Progress website. But they exclude anyone not on Facebook.)
It’s simply incredible how deep the conspiracy to silence Blair goes. Cruelest of all is how they’ve given him a blog to post all he cares, but denied him the skill to get his point across.
A focus on Vinegar Hill in no way denies that other areas were hit by “urban renewal.” In the case of this monument, its purpose is to further the myth that the redevelopment of the Jefferson School is being done to remember the immediate area’s history. In reality, it’s little more than a carefully engineered handout for a group of developers with inside connections to city hall. Ranting about peripheral issues means that the misdirection has done its job.
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/apr/14/city-vet-possible-designers-vinegar-hill-monument-ar-1842986/