My local paper, the Tacoma News Tribune, has an editorial on Open Government in this Sunday's edition. This is an editorial series of 12 this year celebrating the paper's 125th anniversary. This theme is also an important one within the remainder of the State, including the Seattle Times, which initiated the Coaliton on Open Government.
As the paper notes:
Advancing the cause of open government is a value, not a business model.
On a similar note the paper hosted a great forum last week on the role of newspapers in connecting with their community in the internet age. Panelists included Michael Fancher of the Seattle Times, David Brewster of the Seattle Weekly/Crosscut, Jack Hart of the Oregonian and two academics. This session was not about business either, however anyone who follows the business knows that the emergence of internet agebusiness models is a current major subject.
I don't have an answer to those related business questions, but I do have some thoughts.
An honest and transparent government may not a business make - however a dedication to same should be a goal of every business whatever their level of operation. As it is a paper's responsibility to advance same it should be a businesses 'responsibility' to support same.
But 'business' is not a monolith - it is merely a name assigned to a collection of very independently minded entities, at least in theory. Up north the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce led by the two big public finance firms, Foster Pepper Sheffelman and Preston Gates might disagree. In practice 'business' to them needs to stand together - both those who serve government (including, first, themselves) and those who work in a more traditional 'free market' sense.
Advertising in the ivory tower theories of Adam Smith is a double edged sword complicating what is otherwise so ideologically simple and clear. On the one hand for markets to be truly 'free' everyone must have access to all information. Advertising is the way to do exchange information, however it is very definitely NOT free.
As such advertising can actually be used to monopolize, to use the word loosely, the attention of the consumer.
Contrary to the opinion of the TNT I'm gonna put forth an idea here - that open competition AND open government SHOULD be the foundation for the next communications business model.
The foundation of such should not be traditional advertising, but rather the yellow page business model, a business which should be transferred from the telcos to newspapers. (or to the telcos, if they establish news organizations with integrity and credibility) This would mean that the advertising basis of every paper should be as broad as that of the historical yellow pages.
I'm imagining a situation where every subscriber continues to pay as well - however with greater revenue accruing to the paper through reduced printing costs. Curling up with a paper is not a bad habit, but it does also have big environmental costs as well.
Rates for inclusion by a business should definitely be higher, but for the smallest business perhaps no more than the differential between a private phone line and a business line. Rates should differ, and setting up an industry by industry pricing structure is the tough part of this idea, as well as is the issue of preferred placement. Google offers one example of how this might be dealt with appropriately.
Newspapers should also give high priority treatment to some businesses NOT based on how much they pay. Rather the paper should establish methods of evaluating businesses of integrity and credibility based on the evaluations of their subscribers.
Put simply this is a business model whereby the local paper becomes more of a trusted broker of information rather than solely a producer of it.
I don't know if this translates to the national market or not. FWIW, Google may already 'own' that market, deservedly. I don't think though that the Google model extends automatically to the local level.
The full feature TNT editorial is here.
