NP: King Crimson, Level Five

The big news in traditional media lately has probably been lousy circulation for newspapers, but I think we're starting to see moves to prepare for what might come after the era of the newspaper ostensibly ends.

For one, you've got a bunch of former Chicago Tribune people setting up shop in town as a new news bureau that will, among other things, provide local Chicago content for the New York Times. With local content on Fridays and Sundays, I'm sure the Times is looking at this as a way to expand it's geographic footprint for "weekender" subscriptions, and it might work, given how crappy both the actual local papers are in Chicago. That it's at least starting off as a non-profit cooperative is the other interesting bit, as this might provide a bulwark against the coming newsmedia apocalypse, which Kevin Drum sees as being maybe fifteen years out.

Is all news becoming local? There's also a new news site coming to DC from the owner of Politico that makes me think he either sees an opportunity or is preparing for a world without the Washington Post. And back in Chicago, you've got the guy behind the short-lived Chi-Town Daily News site trying something new.

And then there's another former Trib editor taking over our uber-local alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader. Lots of moving parts in whatever the newspaper business is becoming, and while there's still a sense of the content trying to separate itself from the medium, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. Part of it seems to come out of out-of-work journalists trying to improvise themselves into new roles and hope they come up with something that can survive the current death spiral, but one or more of these ideas might actually work.