I think building new community news organizations is usually the way to go, but it depends on the situation. But I think it is important that they be non-profit incorporated, as we have seen what has happened to for-profit alternative daily newspapers - they have been bought up by one corporation, and in many cases that corporation has removed the unprofitable local content that was once available.

Being non-profit also means that one person or group of people won't be creating a community website in order to create a golden egg for later in life = selling out when the time is right.

Sustainable long term community media should be non-profit and independent.

-I do still respect community media projects that are for-profit (I think coastsider.com falls in this category), but I do not think it is the long term solution to our privatized media system.

Just my two cents,
Steve

Quoting Bill Densmore :

>
> Doing some catching up, we just came across MGP2006 alum Barry
> Parr's Oct. 12, 2006, blog posting about the future of the Los
> Angeles times. Parr, the Jupiter Research analyst who also is a
> pioneer local online news community operator with Coastsider.com,
> suggests it is now better to build, not buy, a metropolitan news
> organization. Is he right?
>
> See:
> http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/parr/archives/2006/10/disman... [1]
>