Romenesko

J-School: Educating Independent Journalists
Even while circulation and staff were dropping at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News under Knight Ridder, and even as the challenge posed by the Internet loomed on the horizon, profits got bigger and bigger, reports the J-School blog. "This, to me, is the real tragedy of public chain ownership of local newspapers in the 1990's," writes Chris Anderson. "Not the decline in journalistic quality, which was arguably real (to a degree) or the effects of media concentration (whose ultimate effects are still unclear), but a failure to plan ahead and prepare for a Internet future that a lot of people knew was coming. They were so focused on the quarterly bottom line that they failed to realize that the long-term bottom line was where they were really at risk." (via Jay Rosen)