The Hon. Julius Genachowski Chairman

Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20554

Dear Chairman Genachowski:

October 3, 2011

The undersigned organizations are innovative local online news organizations serving communities across the country. We are new, start-up enterprises, and we are part of a growing movement of local online sites dedicated to news, information and community. As the legacy media industry has undergone increasing strain in engaging in local community and investigative reporting, our enterprises have stepped up to begin rebuilding local journalism.

Because we are dedicated to serving the local information needs of our communities, we read your working group report, The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age, with great interest. The report pointed out that our start-up enterprises are not yet self-sustaining enough to fill the gaps left by legacy media cutbacks, and we do not disagree with this conclusion — as of today. But our potential to serve local audiences is being proven every day in our communities, and local online enterprises such as ours will emerge to be an important force in the lives of Americans.

The report correctly concludes that sustainability and workable business models will be essential to the future of local online journalism. Advertising is an important element of this future. In that regard, the report points out a modest change in policy that could make a real near-term difference in the sustainability of local journalism: a shift in the federal government’s advertising spending from national media to local media. As the report states: “Targeting existing federal advertising spending to local news media could help local news media models— both commercial and nonprofit, online and off-line—gain traction and help create local jobs, while potentially making taxpayer spending more cost-effective.” We understand that the Television Bureau of Advertising and the Newspaper National Network support this concept, on behalf of the local television and newspaper industries. We agree.

The report understandably focuses on the potential for such a shift in federal advertising policy to foster local newspaper and television coverage. But the potential benefit of such a shift in policy for local online news enterprises could be even more dramatic and important to the public interest. Our highly granular local orientation permits us to offer tightly targeted advertising models that could benefit government advertisers and make their efforts markedly more cost-effective. This result would provide the government with extremely efferctive advertising choices and allow taxpayer dollars to go farther. And the benefits of even a modest amount of government spending on local online news enterprises could be, in a relative sense, far more beneficial in sustaining local online journalism than expenditures on legacy

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media. Even modest advertising revenues will permit us to expand news coverage, create new journalism jobs, and better serve our local communities.

Needless to say, these decisions should be made by professionals within the government and within advertising agencies on an entirely content-neutral basis. We believe that can be accomplished. The result would provide the government with extremely effective advertising choices. And the by-product of this more effective advertising policy will be a movement toward sustainability and self-sufficiency on the part of new, innovative local news organizations that can serve the information needs of local communities today and in the future.

We look forward to today’s hearing, and would be pleased to provide any further information that may be helpful to you.

Respectfully submitted,

The Hon. Julius Genachowski October 3, 2011

Signed:

/s Joel Kramer

Editor and CEO MinnPost.com Minneapolis, Minnesota

/s Ben Ilfeld

Operations Manager SacramentoPress.com Sacramento, California

/s
Polly Kreisman

Publisher and Editor theLoopNY .com Westchester County, N.Y.

/s Jeremy Iggers

Publisher
Twin Cities Daily Planet/ www.tcdailyplanet.net

/s Suzanne McBride

Editor and Publisher, AustinTalks Founder, Chicago Talks austintalks.org