GEOFFREY COWAN: Eroding Power
There is, it's true, some concern
in Los Angeles about the growing concentration of media power
in the East. But that power's home base is in Chicago, not New
York. Out here we are still reeling a bit from last year's sale
of the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune Company.
While the loss of local ownership
represents a profound change for Los Angeles, there is little
new about the concentration of clout in New York. The impact of
The New York Times, combined with the reach of the network news
operations and the newsweeklies, has been a fact of life for generations.
If anything, though, their power may have eroded a bit over the
past few years except for the Times. Not because it is
based in New York or because it is part of a conglomerate, but
because, for all of its faults, it represents the best in journalism.
Frankly, I hope that it has the effect of setting a standard that
does have an impact on the aspirations and quality of newspapers
everywhere.
Geoffrey Cowan is dean of the Annenberg School
for Communication at the University of Southern California.
TONY RIDDER: It's All About Proximity
I am of the opinion that geography
may account for some things being over-covered, and some things
missed entirely . . . but by and large, these "distortions," if
that is the right word, have virtually no bearing on what our
own papers report.
Most of the eastern media missed
the story of the growth and importance of Silicon Valley for years
-- not because of any inherent elitism or snobbishness, but because
they were based 3,000 miles away. Conversely, the eastern media
may over-cover some other things, notably in the journalistic/financial
realms: Cap Cities's acquisition of ABC, the Newhouses' purchase
of The New Yorker, and coverage of magazine and book publishing.
But again, I don't see anything sinister here. (Parochial, maybe,
but not sinister!) It is proximity, and the media's own interested
bias, that prompts such coverage.
Tony Ridder is chairman and
chief executive officer of Knight Ridder.
