If the basic business model is “Aggregate an audience then monetize that audience”, then the model seems unchanged. I’m now coming to believe that the model is fundamentally the same. It is the business practices and assumptions that are broken.

But I do have another line of thinking I’ve been dwelling on. That is that local media companies are not really media companies. They are distribution companies. The have controlled a transport mechanism and distributed content and advertising. The advertising being the goose laying the golden eggs to fund the content. If you go with the premise that the companies that call themselves local media are not media but distribution and that their business is really distribution (like a phone company) and not media, well then, yes their business model is now broken.

My current conclusion is that they are distribution companies that believe themselves to be media companies. They approach their problems like they are media business model problems when their fundamental problem is that they are distribution companies and it is the distribution model that has fallen apart.

If local media wants to solve their core problems then they need to start with an assumption of “I don’t have control of the distribution mechanism, now what is my value proposition, why am I relevant?”

I’m interested in what others have to say here.