In the midst of a significant downturn in the print media business, some interesting news has filtered out this fall: CNN is preparing to compete with the Associated Press as a news wire service.
The move seizes on the growing budget pinch felt by newspapers, and the AP’s equally growing rates for news. Interestingly, the CNN plan appears to target cities like Wichita, with a one-person reporter armed with a laptop and camera. Nothing yet from Fox, I might add.
With pundits speaking wistfully about the decline and fall of newspapers, it will be interesting to see if the television news giant really wants to pay the freight to produce top-quality local, state, national and international written news.
2 Comments
There’s very little, I’d say, that the television news media (be it local or national) is concerned with doing “top quality” as I equate quality with depth of coverage and accuracy. Further, I’d also say that most newspapers are only concerned with filling their pages with as little content (quality or otherwise) as possible. This is evident as newsroom staffs are continuously slashed to shore up supposedly dwindling profit margins. (Just today Gannett embarked on a company-wide 10% layoff notification and The Eagle’s parent McClatchy has had two rounds so far this year.)
But, as cynical as I may be, I’d warn The Eagle and other newspapers not to doubt the abilities of CNN. Newspapers scoffed at the Internet a few years ago and now look where they are. Heck, the cheap sound bytes CNN produced might just be the content-filler newspapers are looking for as more newsroom positions are eliminated, which are well into the thousands nationwide.
CNN has already entered the ‘print’ media with cnn.com. And locally Channel 12 seems to be doing at least as much in-depth investigating as the eagle does.