Joel Mathis

This is familiar: As a service to all our readers, unlimited access to Hurricane Dorian coverage on MiamiHerald.com is available throughout the duration of the storm.  We are working to keep our readers safe and informed during this time. Throughout Hurricane Dorian and its aftermath, the Miami Herald will be providing you with South Florida’s most complete coverage of the storm. Please stay up-to-date with MiamiHerald.com , our mobile apps , newsletters and daily e-Edition . Our team will be providing continuous news, photos, videos and stories throughout this severe weather event. Journalism is the only business in the world that makes its product free just as demand goes through the roof. There's a reason for that: The public service aspect of journalism outweighs the moneymaking aspect in times of crisis. But it's a reason why purely market-based approaches to saving newspapers probably won't work. 

This isn't entirely a new observation, but....

Another shitty day for local journalism: I mean, damnit. We're left with a couple of conclusions: • The business model for local newspapers has utterly failed. • The mission of local newspapers is needed, desperately. So I make a proposal — one I don't think will find much support in a nation used to thinking of "news" as a "business," but one that recognizes that knowing what's going on is vital to our civic health. It's time to make the news a utility. I thought for awhile that the model for this should be public radio, with its funding reliant on donors, grants, and some public backing. But I don't think that'll do that trick. Instead, my model is the BBC, where anybody who uses a TV is required to hold a "TV license" that pays the television, radio and online services of the BBC . Every city, I now believe, should charge a similar licensing fee and use it to create an online news service to serve the local pop

My return to Lawrence, Kansas coincided with an epochal moment in the city’s history: After 125 years of ownership by the Simons family, the Lawrence Journal-World passed to the ownership of Ogden Newspapers, a West Virginia company with newspapers all over this great country. One consequence of the new ownership: A lot of longtime employees lost their jobs . None of this is a surprise, exactly. Lawrence hasn’t been immune to the newspaper industry’s overall decline over the last decade; the Simons family decided they couldn’t sustain the cost anymore, and Ogden apparently decided the paper would only be sustainable at a smaller size. Even before the sale, there was less LJW than there used to be, as both the staff and the paper had shrunk in fits and starts over time. Even though I’m a Journal-World alum, I thought about skipping a subscription when we returned. Used copies of the paper are easy enough to find on coffee shop tables or at libraries in town; I wasn’t

As expected, my first issue of the Philadelphia Daily News landed with a startle-me-out-of-my-sleep SMACK on the front steps this morning. After checking my e-mail on my iPhone, I decided to forgo electronic stimulation for a little while and spend some time with my new newspaper. And time I spent. It takes me five-to-10 minutes most mornings to blaze through Philly headlines on my Google Reader. But that's only the "local news" headlines. There's a lot more stuff in the paper, obviously, but there's something about the physical medium of paper that slows. you. down. Or maybe that's just me. In any case, I spent about an hour with the Daily News this morning -- probably aided by the fact that the Friday edition is a little fatter with weekend "things to do around town" news than its sister issues the rest of the week. Here's what I found: * CRIME: Actually, I was always getting the crime news on my RSS feed from Philly.com, but I usua

We moved to Philadelphia nearly two years ago, and for the first time in my adult life I've gone without a subscription to a local daily newspaper. Why? Easy: It's the 21st century! Why spend money on getting a printed product when you can just go to Philly.com and select the RSS feeds you want to follow? Today, however, that changed. Money's still tight in the Mathis household -- full-time employment sure would be nice! -- but it seemed like a declaration of values is needed. I subscribed to the Philadelphia Daily News. Our first issue should arrive on Friday or Saturday. Again, why? Again: Easy. The Daily News has new owners . And I want them to know how important Philadelphia journalism is to me. To be clear, this isn't passive-aggressive gotcha with Brian Tierney, the would-be media mogul who lost control of the Daily News -- and the Inquirer , and Philly.com -- today. I've been critical of Tierney's seeming cynicism and hucksterism -- but if Tier