It was in this city, in 1968, that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death as he emerged onto a balcony of the Lorraine Motel. King's murder transformed the civil rights movement. It also forever scarred Memphis, a decaying metropolis that is still one of the more racially divided cities in America. It was against this backdrop that the several hundred conventioneers of the AAN met last week to discuss everything from libel on the Web to the costs of newsprint. But the issue that galvanized our convention was the purchase of several New England weeklies earlier this year by Times Mirror, one of America's larger daily newspaper chains.
Consolidation is a fact of life in the media business.
It's as if the Newhouse chain, which owns The Oregonian , had purchased Willamette Week . In Memphis members agonized over this event, debated the potential consequences for independent journalism and argued over what to do. For the moment, we've resolved to change our association's bylaws as they relate to membership. Next year, we may be voting to throw the Hartford Advocate out. It's hard to see how the Times Mirror purchase of the Hartford Advocate furthers that effort.