Des Moines Register
11-11-07
Doak: Get best of modern media world — allow newspaper, TV ownership
By RICHARD DOAK
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
If I were young again and just starting out in journalism, the place I'd like to work
would be neither a newspaper nor a television station.
It would be both.
It would be a combined newspaper-television newsroom, and the sum of the
news it could deliver to readers-viewers would be greater than either part could
deliver alone.
The television broadcasts at 6 and 10 p.m. could carry more news because the
station's small staff would be augmented by the reporting power of the
newspaper's large staff.
The newspaper could broaden its news gathering even more if its reporters didn't
have to staff the same events being covered by the TV reporters.
Best of all, a combined newspaper-television station could produce a killer Web
site.
A local Web site that had both comprehensive text and compelling visual
presentation would be unbeatable. A merged TV-newspaper newsroom could
create a site everyone in town would automatically log onto first, not only for
news but also for community information, entertainment, discussions, weather
and links to databases and government agencies.
It would be a convenient, indispensable, one-stop source for text and visual
information. Every community should have one.
American communities never will, however, unless the Federal Communications
Commission allows "cross ownership" of newspapers and television stations.
Commission rules forbid any company from owning both a broadcast television
station and a newspaper in the same community. The Republican majority on the
commission appears headed toward rescinding the rule over the objections of
Democrats.
The Republicans should stick by their guns and get rid of the anachronistic rule.
(Disclaimer: I do not know whether the Gannett Co., owner of the Register, has a
position on cross ownership. I have not discussed the issue with my former
colleagues at the Register. The views expressed here are entirely those of this
former newspaperman and current journalism teacher.)
Opponents of allowing cross ownership raise the fear of media being
concentrated in too few hands. If that's the problem, the way to address it is by
limiting the total number of stations a company may own, not by prohibiting the
natural convergence of print and broadcast news in local communities.
Convergence is the right word. It used to be a theoretical concept. Now it's here.
The lines are blurring between print and electronic media as they converge onto
one platform, the Internet.
Newspaper reporters that used to carry nothing put pencil and notebook now are
lugging digital cameras and video recorders on their assignments so they can get
visual material for their Web sites. Television reporters are writing newspaperstyle copy so their Web sites can have text to accompany the video.
But newspaper staffs aren't great at visuals, and TV staffs aren't great at text.
Combined staffs could be, and a lot of unnecessary duplication of assignments
could be eliminated in the process.
Requiring newspapers and local television stations to remain separate would be
like requiring hardware to be sold only in hardware stores and clothing to be sold
only in clothing stores, thus denying Wal-Mart the ability to sell both in its
supercenters.
The time has come for supercenters of another kind.
Combined newspaper-TV operations, with maybe a 24-hour cable channel in the
mix, too, would become information supercenters.
Cross ownership would allow it to happen.
Another argument against cross ownership is that it would allow one company to
monopolize the news in a community. That's an obsolete concept. In an age
when anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is
impossible.
Having an information supercenter in your community would leave plenty of room
for boutique information shops around town.
Of course, it's possible that the motives of FCC commissioners who want to allow
cross ownership are not entirely pure. Perhaps they are succumbing to the
blandishments of media moguls who want to expand their empires.
If so, it would be an instance of self-interest coinciding with the public interest. A
strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public
better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more
profit in the deal.
Convergence is the future. The government should stop trying to prevent it.
RICHARD DOAK is a retired Register editor and columnist and a lecturer in
journalism at Iowa State University.