Monday, April 6, 1998 | 10:05 a.m.
Las Vegas 1, a 24-hour television news station owned by the Las Vegas SUN, KLAS-TV Channel 8 and Prime Cable, is an example of a growing trend among competing news organizations across the nation.
The all-news station, which debuts on Channels 1 and 39 at 9 p.m. today with the inaugural "News One" broadcast from the Las Vegas SUN studio, is Southern Nevada's first true cross-media partnership.
Jan Schaffer, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism in Washington, D.C, explained there are three different types of media ventures in effect today.
* Partnerships. These are entered into by competing media companies to establish separate business entities to deliver the news on a permanent basis. Las Vegas 1 is an example.
* Civic Journalism. This occurs when two competing news organizations join forces to cover a specific issue. Examples include: The Cleveland Plain Dealer and several area radio stations operating "Voters First" to identify issues during the 1996 elections, and the Detroit Free Press and WXYZ-TV joining forces recently to explore the issue of violence against children.
* Joint Ventures. In this case, two or more news organizations share resources in a form of "organizational blending." Typical ventures are so-called joint operating agreements in which two newspapers share production facilities and maintain separate editorial voices. The JOA between the Las Vegas SUN and the Las Vegas Review-Journal is an example.
Researchers say that while civic journalism projects and joint ventures have raised eyebrows among media critics and representatives of newspaper and broadcast trade groups, it's the partnership -- the permanent establishment of one editorial voice among competing news organizations -- that has generated the most interest in recent years.
"It would appear to be a brilliant marketing move if you look at the numbers (of those who watch television and read newspapers)," Schaffer said. "And when you add in cablevision subscribers you get added value."
Porter agreed.
"I've always said the strength of TV is the sheer numbers it attracts. In the top 10 or 20 markets, you might have as many as 1 million people watching the 6 p.m. newscast," Porter said. "And the newspaper will not attract that many readers, but it attracts a different type of consumer, one who can appreciate and understand more in-depth analysis."
But not all experts like the idea of television-newspaper-cable partnerships.
"Is it a good long-term business model to align news and cable? I don't know if it is," said Ken Allen, chief executive officer of the National Newspaper Association, a Washington-based trade organization representing community newspapers.
"Personally, if I were to run a newspaper I'd be looking to diversify into other areas. I guess that's why I don't run a newspaper," Allen said. "I don't think the answer to newspaper survival is providing cable news 24 hours a day. The fact is that newspapers provide local information better than anyone else, and people who want local news will get it through newspapers, and not by watching television."
One who agrees with this assessment about newspapers is John Sturm, president and chief executive officer of the Newspaper Association of America, an industry trade group representing 90 percent of the daily circulation in the country.
"We're the best when it comes to news," Sturm said. "We spend much more time and effort in gathering the news that matters to folks -- the local stuff. We're better on local news by far. In fact, most of the radio and TV stations use the local newspaper for story leads."
But aren't newspapers dinosaurs?
"I certainly don't think newspapers are dinosaurs, but I don't know. Ted Turner, when he founded CNN, said newspapers would be dead in 10 years, and that was 25 years ago," said Sturm, who explained that although there's been a slight downward trend in newspaper circulation over the last decade, 58 million Americans buy a newspaper on a given weekday and 62 million on Sunday.
"If you figure that in excess of two people read each newspaper that's purchased, that's an incredible reach," Sturm said.
In order to extend that reach, nearly two dozen newspapers in cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Las Vegas have formed partnerships with television stations and cable companies.
"Newspapers are finding new ways to serve the public. This is something that is beneficial to the newspaper and the public, and frankly this is something we're probably going to see more of," said Sturm, who added that his association is lobbying the FCC to repeal the 1975 "Newspaper Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule" that, among other things, limits the number of a company's interests that cross media lines.
While the goal of the FCC in promulgating the Cross Ownership Rule was "laudable," Sturm said times have changed since 1975.
"Back then there were three network TV stations and one independent radio station per market, and now with the advent of FM, the number of stations has exploded. Also cable television is delivering 50-100 channels everywhere, and then along comes the Internet, which is another vehicle."
Not only the media landscape has changed since 1975. So has the mood of Congress toward communications regulation. The proof: passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, intended to spur competition in the entire communications industry.
FCC attorney Roger Holberg explained that one of the provisions of the TelCom Act is the requirement that the commission reviews all broadcast ownership rules, and the commission has already done so.
"We are directed to determine whether any of these rules are necessary and in the public interest, and to repeal or modify any of these regulations that the commission determines to be no longer in the public interest," said Holberg, who added the commission is accepting written comments on the cross-ownership issue until May 22.
Meanwhile, "cross-pollination" among newspapers and television news stations already is occurring more and more frequently, said Cy Porter, project director for community journalism at the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Washington.
"How many news organizations do you know that are either going online or putting their newspaper reporters in front of the camera?" Porter asked. "We see these collaborations all the time, the newspaper reporter who is a so-called political expert going on camera, the civic journalism projects, and other organizations who go one step further."
Davis "Buzz" Merritt, editor of the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, said attracting good people is more important to the survival of newspapers than forming cross-media partnerships.
"I think we have some serious problems and one of them is attracting good people," Merritt said. "The lure of web sites and all that stuff is taking the very best journalism people. If you look at enrollments in journalism schools, the print sequence has become the smallest. It's all broadcast, Internet, website, and computer oriented (curriculums). That's a threat."
About cross-media partnerships, Merritt said: "I don't have a problem with them, but I get troubled if everyone is in it. Then you have a cabal."
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