Bill Gates Foundation Buys Fairbanks Daily News Miner

Seeing the banner again reminds me of happier times and stories, like the time the Mayor’s portrait got stolen, and some people who shall remain unamed taped together a hostage note for ransom and signed it “The Fairbanks Liberation Front”. This was during the time of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and back then Islamofascist terrorists were still a considered a joke

Well, sorta. Sorry I couldn’t resist the headline since the Fairbanks Daily News Miner was my home town paper growing up. We sometimes called it the Daily News Minus, but let’s face it there’s not much to report in a small town that far North.

Drudge is reporting that MediaNews has been purchased by the Gates Foundation, and the charitable foundation seems to be bailing out local papers about to go out of business. Drudge is suspicious, but I can see how this might be a good thing. If you hit their Newschoice web site you can scroll down through all the local versions of the papers they aggregate, mostly from the West and Pacific Northwest, which is actually pretty cool. I think this is a way to save local reporting, and local reporters, however it does fail to account for Bloggers and Blogging.

Over time outfits like these could become the regional news channels of choice, supplanting the Legacy Media Dinosaurs like the New York Times, LA times etc.

Seeing the banner again reminds me of happier times and stories, like the time the Mayor’s portrait got stolen, and some people who shall remain unamed taped together a hostage note for ransom and signed it “The Fairbanks Liberation Front” aka the FLF. This was during the time of the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and back then Islamofascist terrorists were still a considered a joke.

2 thoughts on “Bill Gates Foundation Buys Fairbanks Daily News Miner”

  1. Thanos, is there any concensus as to what is going to happen to these newspapers? I’m sure they are not buying them up and then letting them continue to run in the red? By the way, congratulations on the Crunchy Crustacean status! :o) Have a great day!

  2. Thanks for stopping by, my best guess is that Medianews will be absorbed and provide regional content for local reporting. Then they will aggregate further down the road, keeping the local reporters now in electronic media, but sifting through it to bubble up some of the stories to regional or national status. Remember Gates also owns MSNBC, which has little to no reporting net, and which is going down the tubes due to lack of content. Content is key, and local content will add to the current non-diverse mix.

Comments are closed.