Community Ownership

Fred Kohler, a Seattle entrepreneur, has another proposal for improving news content. He wants to create "Community Communication Cooperatives.17 " Citizens would become owners of a media outlet by investing money in its operation and by committing their attention — by a contract to read the paper or listen to the radio — to its content. For Kohler,

"The underlying thesis is that residents of communities can do things collectively for themselves that no individual is able to do or likely to do for them — and that they can achieve this with traditional forms of association or incorporation. Within that thesis is a concept of 'public-private partnership' — 'public' by virtue of strong elements of common weal and common wealth; 'private' because it involves neither municipal funds nor taxes; and 'partnership' as a way of redefining the basic relationship within the community."

The community, in Kohler's model, would then own the medium literally and figuratively. Local publications and radio stations that are not particularly financially attractive as purchases to the giant media companies would be appropriate properties for community media co-ops. Kohler says this marketing model will also make the medium more attractive to advertisers because of the community's investment of cash and attention.