This article from the American right-wing news site Etherzone is a sad one.
Sean Scallon, a newspaper reporter and regular columnist for the site, told of a small, family-owned newspaper in Green Bay, home of the Packers football team. It was the only competition to the major daily owned by Gannett Inc., who also owns USA Today. The small paper fought this branch of Gannett for over 20 years, but finally the owner had to sell to them. The chain - owning 150 papers nationally, along with USA Today - used it's muscle to drag the small paper down to defeat.
This should be more fuel for our fire, so to speak, to work to smash the power of the chain storesand other like conglomerates. Yes, too many of us Distributists shop at chain stores or buy chain newspapers and so on. It doesn't mean we should approve of them, or throw our hands in the air and say "all is lost" in the fight against them.
This is one of Distributism's permanent campaigns: to permanently brake the power of chain stores and chain companies. So, to use this story for an example, we must continue to craft laws - nationally and state-wide - to favor the independent media outlets. Not just on the Internet, for far too many cannot afford to get on it, or don't know how. But also in the print and broadcast media. So the tax burden on the family-owned or worker-owned and managed papers or radio or TV stations must be lifted for good. Conversely, the tax and regulatory burden on the chains - including Gannett, New York Times Corp. and so on - must increase until they are forced to sell them or spin them off as independent companies.
Centralization of ownership of the media into fewer hands - whether of big government or big business or both - is immoral and unhealthy to any sane society. Hence, we should mourn the loss of another family-owned newspaper to a left-wing chain like Gannett, and promote the campaign against newspaper chains, no matter how long it takes.
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