• Hartford Courant, Monday, November 14, 2005 12:45 PM

The Hartford Courant's Dan Haar, in a lengthy, considered piece about the "crisis" in the news media business, argues for boldness: "Don't just manage the enterprise to beat back problems. Lead the troops to create great journalism, to sell advertising in innovative ways, to devise Web sites that people don't stop talking about." Noting that share prices are depressed throughout the industry and that profits, though strong, are under constant pressure, Haar says "we've seen little measurable benefit" from experiments in co-ownership--newspapers that own TV stations, TV stations that operate local magazines, and so forth--and that, furthermore, these co-ventures often result in internal resentment among the various news-producing units. It is a less-than-ideal solution to the industry's manifold woes. The entire news industry is a mess, the author concludes. And the only way out is audacious management.

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