Could Big Media replace our local media?
Could Big Media replace our local media?
What's next? Yelp doing local restaurant reviews and reporting on local business news? This could be a trend worth keeping an eye on.
Big national media players are watching the success of indie local news operations, often run by a single local journalist, and realizing they can enter a local news space, hire two or three of the area's best journalists, and potentially dominate local coverage. For instance, Axios Local just announced plans to move into Richmond, and the New York Times paid a whopping $550 million for The Athletic, an online subscription sports magazine, with plans to increase its local presence by hiring local talent. The Athletic's co-founder famously said, "We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last one's standing." And here we have Yelp doing interview features with local business owners. Right now, this is happening in larger markets than Charlottesville, but I suspect that could change in the near future. Will this be a good thing? A disaster for the local media landscape? Again, worth keeping an eye on.
I suspect a lot of the small local independents prefer not to be bothered with being corporate employees and give up their independence. On the other hand, small corporate-owned media outlets in it for the money may welcome the big corporate take over. I've watched a lot of this happening in the software development world. The startup planned to use their success as proof of their value to a large corporation that probably wouldn't have interviewed them except to get control of their groundbreaking software. Many delve into the world of open source just for this purpose. Also app developers use their the popularity of their apps to get hired by the big boys.