Although the FCC has no direct regulatory power over newspapers, if the bureau goes ahead with loosening or tossing out the cross-ownership ban, this would like have effects on the nation’s newspapers, nonetheless. In the American Journalism Review John Morton analyzes some of the ways in which newspapers might be impacted.
I think his closing paragraph nails the real nature of the changes:
“With the increasing corporatization of newspaper ownership–and by this I am not referring to size so much as to the attitudes of management–newspapers have come to be viewed more as economic units than living, breathing, diverse operations with personality, history and tradition. To the extent that this attitude has taken hold, we could see some shuffling around of newspaper economic units.”
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