Trust Ownership and the Future of News : Media Moguls and White Knights

In 2005 the Canadian-based media conglomerate CanWest had newspaper and broadcasting interests in seven countries. It boasted revenue in Canadian dollars in excess of $3 billion and assets of more than $5 billion. Five years later it was bankrupt, its assets were dispersed and it was ignominiously reduced to a shell company called 2737469 Canada Inc. CanWest was a dramatic example of the evolutionary trajectory of media companies and the largest to take Darwinian theory to its terminal conclusion in the turbulent aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Others tottered on the brink of extinction but survived. Across the border, the owners of both of Chicago's metropolitan newspapers -the giant Tribune Company and the smaller Sun-Times Media -filed for bankruptcy within four months of each other, with the former then restructured and the latter sold. In Britain, The Independent was sold for £1 to a Russian entrepreneur after the London newspaper's Irish owner hit a brick wall of debt. The effects of high debt were also felt in Australasia, where billions of dollars were wiped off the value of newspaper-owning companies. These were not, however, innocent victims of wider economic woes. They conformed to a pattern that began to take form years before Western banks introduced the term "sub-prime" to everyday speech. The financial crisis simply accelerated processes that were already underway. The United States is the leading media market and for years its news media companies were high earners. In 2005 (a year in which the US media castigated oil companies for making 10 per cent "windfall profits" following petrol price increases) profit margins in American media companies fell a modest 1.5 points to an average of slightly less than 20 per cent. However, disaster struck in the wake of the international recession. The average operating margin for the publicly reporting companies, which represented about 40 per cent of the nation's daily newspaper circulation, was estimated in 2010 to be around 5.6 per cent. 1 Two years later it was hovering around 6 per cent but assorted special charges reduced iconic companies like the 16 \* Before exceptionals; \* \* Reflects pension credit. Crumbling business models mean news media structures must change. Gavin Ellis explores the past and present use of newspaper trusts - drawing on case studies such as the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Pulitzer Prize winning Tampa Bay Times - to make the case for a form of ownership dedicated to sustaining high quality journalism. Trust Ownership and the Future of News makes the case for an alternative structure that can sustain the forms of journalism necessary in a free, functioning democracy and which engender public confidence in the news media. This ground-breaking study examines the past and present use of trustee governance by newspapers, public service broadcasters and news agencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. Its case studies of the Guardian, Irish Times and Tampa Bay Times - plus examination of the family trusts behind the Daily Mail, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post - detail the principles, practices and lessons of trustee ownership that can be applied by the digital 'new media' generation entrusted with the future of news "Trust Ownership and the Future of News makes the case for an alternative structure that can sustain the forms of journalism necessary in a free, functioning democracy and which engender public confidence in the news media. This ground-breaking study examines the past and present use of trustee governance by newspapers, public service broadcasters and news agencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. Its case studies of the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Tampa Bay Times - plus examination of the family trusts behind the Daily Mail, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post - detail the principles, practices and lessons of trustee ownership that can be applied by the digital 'new media' generation entrusted with the future of news"--Back cover "Trust Ownership and the Future of News" makes the case for an alternative structure that can sustain the forms of journalism necessary in a free, functioning democracy and which engender public confidence in the news media. This ground-breaking study examines the past and present use of trustee governance by newspapers, public service broadcasters and news agencies in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. Its case studies of the "Guardian", "Irish Times" and "Tampa Bay Times" plus examination of the family trusts behind the "Daily Mail", "New York Times", "Wall Street Journal" and "Washington Post" 6 detail the principles, practices and lessons of trustee ownership that can be applied by the digital 'new media' generation entrusted with the future of news Front Matter....Pages i-ix Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Why We Need Public Interest Journalism....Pages 3-15 Journalism’s Crisis....Pages 16-47 Media under Scrutiny....Pages 48-64 Front Matter....Pages 65-65 Genesis of Media Trusts....Pages 67-98 Keeping It in the Family....Pages 99-136 The Trinity — Origins and Growth....Pages 137-174 Modern White Knights....Pages 175-211 The Electronic Age....Pages 212-242 Conclusions — Possibilities and Realities....Pages 243-263 Back Matter....Pages 264-311 Review: "This book contains a very useful and timely overview of the various crises that have shaped journalism over the years and an excellent reminder of the investigations that have been carried out into journalism's structure and purpose (and which seem destined to be repeated again and again)." - Des Freedman, Professor Media and Communication Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK