PressEthic

With the ongoing conflict at the Los Angeles Times breeding speculation on possible outcomes, there is a tendency to categorize the possibilities as either good or bad.

So when the LA Times Editor Dean Baquet and Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson spoke out against further cuts at the paper, they were painted by many in the media world as heroes.

Quickly, Johnson was pushed out by the paper’s owner. Baquet is hanging on, and outwardly feisty.

Just as quickly, names were floated of LA millionaires who might be interested in purchasing the paper, and as the story goes, they just might become heroes too. The heroes of private ownership fending off the greedy Wall-Street types.

But Edward Wasserman thinks we may be too eager for a fairy-tale ending.

In his Miami Herald column, Wasserman says:

For newsroom people, the hope is that vanity will deliver what greed could not: A stable business environment in which journalists can serve the public with quality work while returning a modest profit to owners.

That's the hope. The question is why anybody should imagine that such bliss would be more achievable when news organizations are owned by hard-driving, fabulously wealthy individuals -- who amassed great riches by cutting corners, cutting costs and, for all I know, cutting throats -- than it is now, when the owners are anonymous pension funds and investment pools. But such are the mysteries of faith.

He goes on to reflect on his own experience working for different ownership schemes, and comes to the following conclusion:

I don't think I ever met an owner, no matter how rich, who would pony up a nickel of his own money to cover shortfalls in the operations of a company he owned unless somebody was holding a gun to his head, and even then, not before he'd had a moment to think it over.

So to me the notion that the industry's salvation lies in buying freedom from public stockholders through the help of chivalrous saints with deep pockets is highly dubious.

Instead of hoping for a shining knight in the form of a narcissistic owner, he suggests that newspapers would do better by investing more thought and resources into adapting to new media delivery models:

But the problems the news business faces aren't Wall Street's fault. They derive from the need to reformulate a business model that will enable news organizations to sustain themselves in the Internet age so they can continue to nourish the rest of us.

That may be true, but a short term happy ending would surely be welcomed by the LA Times staff and other journalists across the country.