News Has Cooties

Buzzmachine referred to that same Zell interview I blogged on a couple of weeks ago, and had this to say -

Zell asked the right questions - about cost structure, ego, lazy ad sales, bad business practices. The first problem was that he asked them 13 years too late (see Clay Shirky, below). The second problem is that he had no answers, or the answers he had were uninformed. And the problem for the industry is that Zell is all it had to offer as a savior - and that’s saying a mouthful.

Have to agree on both points.

The final analysis?

What saddens me even more is that we are not seeing investment to step into the vacuum. I know people who’ve worked on businesses to try to create new, online-one local news operations but they can’t get funding. I have no doubt that there is a sustainable business in local news. The problem is that, at least for the present, the current and former owners of local news ruined it. Thanks to them, news has cooties.

(Emphasis mine.)