Monday, November 2, 2009
Chicagoland / Media Will the Chicago News Collective represent Chicago?
Posted by Whet Moser on 11.02.09 at 12:07 PM
In the Sun-Times today, Laura Washington calls out the nascent Chicago News Cooperative (using Andrew Patner's post as a jumping-off point) for being an old boys' club: "All the wealthy, upper-middle class elites have assembled a cozy club to decide what the masses should know."
I'm not unsympathetic, but still reserving judgment. If you want to create a media organization quickly out of thin air, it's easiest done by calling on the powers that be, and the CNC has gone from nonexistent to something of a player with surprising speed. So while it makes me itchy, I can see why they've called on big names for management.
A better test will be the contributors they assemble to actually make the sausage (Greising might not do much for diversity, but his reputation is inarguable). Which is why, despite the fact that the critiques may be somewhat premature, I'm grateful for them, and hoping the CNC folks are reading them with the knowledge that their potential future audience has some concerns.
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