Would Independent Papers Survive?

This writer proposed an interesting theory that the collapse of newspapers is due to newspaper chains, and that locally owned, independent papers would have a closer tie to its community and require less of a profit margin to be succeed.

I have to give that theory a small round of applause. The Times-Dispatch began losing its grasp when it became top heavy with editors who had not worked their way up from copy boy. Who made the decision to hire the current trio in charge from not only out of town, but out of state?

I credit keeping my kitchen table niche newspaper alive for 11 years -- until I got tired of it, not until it financially broke me because it never did -- to low overhead. I did not require it to make a profit, just to break even. Success was paying its own way. How many papers would be a success now if that was the only goal? To not have to pay stockholders, or bloated executive salaries, but just meet the payroll, pay the rent, and print the paper?

Newspapers became corporations, big chains, big business, and that's never what they were meant to be.