In his magisterial
profile of Billy Bulger in this month's Boston magazine, Joe Keohane reports, as an aside, that Mike Barnicle still thinks the
Jack Welch-Jack Connors consortium is going to end up owning the Globe. "Wait’ll we buy it," Barnicle tells Bulger. "We’re gonna buy it!"
Since Barnicle is
probably wrong, here's another idea: what if the Welch-Connors group just started their own new online daily? Today, Jim Romenesko
links
to a press release from one such outfit, MinnPost.com, that's slated to
launch in Minnesota this November. What's really striking about
MinnPost.com is the low, low startup cost: according to the release,
$1.2 million was enough to get this thing going--and $850k of that came
from four "founding families." The staff, apparently, will be a hybrid
of full-timers and contributors with other jobs. In the former
category, editor and CEO Joel Kramer is a former editor of the
Star-Tribune; in the latter, Steve Aschburner--another Star Tribune
alum, who'll presumably be covering the Minnesota
Timberwolves--currently writes for SportsIllustrated.com. And, as the
press release notes, the roster of contributors includes two Pulitzer
winners.
How about it, Mike and Jack and Jack (and
Joe)?
True, you wouldn't get the thrill of owning your hometown paper of
record, and this model would involve running your new daily as a
nonprofit (!). Of course, if making money was your primary goal, you
probably wouldn't be thinking about buying a newspaper. This way, you'd
get to build your own brand from scratch. You'd also save about half a
billion bucks. Think it over.