Tribune’s Truthiness: Blame the Internet

Posted September 20th, 2007 by Craig Aaron

Blame the Internet. That’s Big Media’s latest excuse for why there shouldn’t be any limits on their holdings or pesky public interest requirements. Big Media insists that the Internet has turned the media world on its head — and that they have no more power than a blogger in the basement.

At least that’s what Tribune Co. claimed in an October filing with the FCC, arguing that media ownership rules are obsolete because the once-mighty Trib — which in Chicago alone owns its flagship newspaper, WGN-TV, WGN-AM, cable news channel CLTV and Chicago Magazine — now faces fierce competition from Chicago Ray and Gapers Block.

Not so fast. A new study by Adam Lynn and S. Derek Turner of Free Press debunks Tribune’s claims and shows definitively that a handful of Big Media giants still dominate the local news market — online and off.

Local independent Web sites and blogs are often great sources of fresh opinions and a different slant on the headlines. But they simply don’t have enough local news or a large enough audience to compete with traditional media.

The independent sites in Chicago rely heavily on the traditional outlets for original reporting. And while the independent sites are loaded with concert and restaurant reviews, they’re not covering City Hall or the school board. In fact, only 5.5 percent of the stories contained original reporting on “hard” news topics such as crime, education and local government or politics.

The study also found that independent, Chicago-focused Web sites have tiny audiences compared to their Big Media counterparts. The average number of monthly visitors to the Web sites of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times was nearly 80 times larger than that of the independent sites. And users visited the newspaper sites much more frequently.

The bottom line: The majority of our news and information is still dominated by a few corporations. That’s why limits on media ownership are still so important.

You can read the full study here or see a summary on this handy fact sheet.

Or discuss the findings with co-author Adam Lynn over at the Free Press Action Network.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.