It\u2019s no secret that in America a few large companies own most of the business in any given industry.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine that a world with Disney, Sony, Clear Channel and Google can have anything relevant to offer in a local setting.\u00a0 At least we\u2019ve got our local news, right?<\/p>\n
Sort of.<\/p>\n
Dayton has a few options for citywide news like WDTN and WKEF or the Dayton Business Journal.\u00a0 However, each of these companies is owned by a larger company that\u2019s not even based in Ohio, let alone in Dayton.\u00a0 How can we really say these outlets give us a truly diverse, local perspective?<\/p>\n
The best example of this is the solidifying partnership between WHIO (Channel 7, various radio stations) and the Dayton Daily News.\u00a0 Back in December WHIO started moving its operations to the Cox Ohio Publishing Media Center, which also houses the Dayton Daily News.\u00a0 The two news outlets are owned by a single company, Cox Media Group, which is ultimately owned by Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises.<\/p>\n
Why does this matter?\u00a0 Suppose Home Depot was forcing its employees to work longer hours for less money by threatening to take away health insurance if they didn\u2019t, and anyone who talks to the press is automatically fired.\u00a0 Now suppose that Dayton Daily News caught wind of the story, but were told to ignore it because Arthur Blank, co-founder of The Home Depot, is on Cox Enterprises\u2019 Board of Directors.\u00a0 Do you think they would publish it?<\/p>\n
Okay, so that story was made up, but how about this.\u00a0 WHIO-TV news anchor Natasha Williams had a wrongful death lawsuit filed against her in June 2009 for the March 2007 death of a Moraine driver.\u00a0 Though Williams was speeding, she was not ticketed for the crash that resulted in the other driver\u2019s death because his actions, including failure to yield, contributed to the accident.\u00a0 Dayton Daily News covered the story on June 24, but I couldn\u2019t find any coverage on WHIO\u2019s Web site.\u00a0 If or when this lawsuit is resolved, I wonder how much coverage it will receive now that WHIO is sharing space with Dayton Daily News.<\/p>\n
While partnerships are beneficial for large-scale companies, I\u2019m not convinced that they\u2019re beneficial for consumers, but there\u2019s not a whole lot I can do about it.\u00a0 All I can do is take comfort in the fact that at least for now I work for a truly independent paper that does its best to get relevant news to its readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s no secret that in America a few large companies own most of the business in any given industry.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine that a world with Disney, Sony, Clear Channel and Google can have anything relevant to offer in a local setting.\u00a0 At least we\u2019ve got our local news, right? Sort of. Dayton has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1041,1976,1043,1382,1042],"class_list":["post-4432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-dayton-daily-news","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-media","tag-news","tag-whio"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-19u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4459,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions\/4459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}