Interestingly, I don't know Dane Baker and have never seen his paper. Perhaps it's not distributed in Halls.

I wish him well.

Scripps stock closed at $39.88 today. Its recent high mark came when one of the honchos "accidentally" suggested selling off the newspaper division.

Newspaper people and corporate types don't mix well. Bean is the epitome of a newspaper person. People more interested in making money usually do other things -- such as developing. -- s.

From the editorial: "As the only major independent alternative newspaper in town..."

I guess it depends on your definition of "newspaper", or maybe "major", but the South Knox Seymour Times, the Farragut Press, the Fountain City Focus, and the East Knox News would probably disagree with this statement at least in part.

Those are are great community papers (add Seymour Herold to the list), but wouldn't really be considered "alternative".

Baker's editorial is thoughtful, but it paints with overly broad strokes. The Shopper News is "corporate-owned media," but I've seen little evidence during my time with the paper of subordinating our reporting "to the needs of profit-making." (Quite the reverse, in many instances.)

Larry Van Guilder

I think it is the only locally owned alternative paper, though it's distribution is still rather limited. I also think they have quickly become major players in the field they are playing in.

The Shopper has some very alternative writers on staff, but I'd never read it before I found it online. I do really enjoy reading their columns, especially by the knowledgeable people who post here, but I still wouldn't dub it a major alternative paper.

Fountain City Focus is also a great community newspaper, but it's hardly alternative. I like the community news in it and their coverage of arts events, but it seems to be slanted more to a Republican and somewhat conservative readers.

The Knoxville Voice is openly alternative and proud of it. Maybe some people don't consider them major yet, but they are major players when it comes to alternative news.

R. Neal: Those are are great community papers (add Seymour Herold to the list), but wouldn't really be considered "alternative".

Again, I suppose it depends on your working definition. I can only speak for my own, but I do consider the SKS Times "alternative" because it focuses almost exclusively on good news. You can get misery all over the dial, but it's increasingly hard to find an outlet for positive news.

That's different enough to qualify for the label, in my opinion, if you define "alternative" as "different" or perhaps even "contrarian".

Bill Lyons:One could make a case that corporate ownership looking for bottom line results would be agnostic toward content, no matter how critical, as long as the ad-readership equation worked. And one could make the argument that local owners would be more, not less likely to be sensitive to potential offense of an important interest in their home towns.

That's an interesting dynamic, but is it reflected in the real world? Individual situations no doubt vary, but corporations are widely perceived to be primarily concerned with immediate gratification (i.e. quarterly returns), and notoriously risk-averse.

This would seem to indicate an increased sensitivity to stories that would negatively impact the bottom line, although your point about the ability to absorb these events due to deeper pockets is well-taken (but see below).

Conversely, smaller, privately-owned companies are widely perceived to be less risk-averse, even maverick. In some cases, the need to "make a name" for the company might serve as an incentive to tackle stories that might cause a corporate entity to blink, especially if the primary impetus is increasing readership/viewership, to thereby increase circulation/share and eventually ad revenues.

A corporate entity would more likely take the less risky though arguably more expensive measure of cross-media advertising to achieve the same ends.

Bill Lyons:The truth is that corporate entities have found that there is often a good profit to be made by being critical of other established corporate entities. Sixty Minutes was the cash cow for CBS for a long time gaining audience share for broadcasts that went after major American industries.

I'll concede the example, if you'll concede that 60 Minutes is the exception that proves the rule. You could make the case that 60 Minutes is the most successful television program of any kind, ever (and I'd tend to agree).

But the wild success of that show may have actually had a negative impact on other news-gathering operations.

See (link...) ...especially the first graf on that page, though the story is about a decade old.

The gist of it is that a legendary news operation was downsized into near-insignificance, despite heroic efforts by the staff, as its parent corporation sought greater profitability.

As regards revenue trends for the Big Three, including their magazine shows, check out these charts and analysis:
(link...)

But to return to the subject of local print news, I think that it is important to remember that very often the light cast by a publication is a direct reflection from the editors, publishers, columnists and reporters, and that reflection is then bent through the prism of the paper's ownership. The closer the alignment in mission, intent and execution among these parties, the lower the refractive index, so to speak, and the clearer the spectrum of stories.

The interplay between them and variables introduced by the circumstances of the individual news events are, in my opinion, more likely to give rise to the "nuanced and subtle" approaches to stories that might negatively impact the publication's bottom line.

The solution to that n-body problem is left as an exercise for the reader.