The lead story in today's Missoulian warns that the city and some business associations may have been a bit too optimistic with plans for retail growth in the urban core. I have no real idea whether that is true or not, but this quote really stood out for me:Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Kim Latrielle said she doesn't want to see the city scale back plans for retail businesses. Rather, she said she wants Missoula to bring a new main attraction to town so the local economy can support all the retail it has planned.
"I believe with my whole heart that we need to figure out a way to get more people to Missoula, to bring new money to Missoula," Latrielle said.
The Chamber represents businesses all over Missoula. Latrielle said retailers report that when football season ends, so does their season to earn good income. An exposition center could fill the gap and is on the table as part of the strategic planning efforts at the fairgrounds. The idea of building something that will boost business in the same way that the Griz do is, I think, a little absurd. Washington Grizzly stadium is huge, the team wildly popular, and the season built for a relatively lengthy period of time.
Beyond that, for the Chamber of Commerce's initial response to concerns that a surplus of retail space may be getting developed being to say it is just fine strikes me as irresponsible. Unnecessary development is the underlying phenomenon behind bubbles. Empty retail storefronts won't be very attractive.
Anyways -- I always wanted to mention some interesting phenomena happening in the media world.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer may be on its way out. There is similar news out of Denver, where Rocky Mountain News is likely to shutter its doors. But the big story on the media front I've seen lately is Michael Hirschorn's "End Times" anticipating the potential fall, this year, of The New York Times.
It is no groundbreaking statement to say that the Internet has impacted journalism in ways that the businesses have yet to figure out (they're facing much the same situation as record labels without as many advantages from intellectual property law).
One of my roommates anticipates subscribing to the Missoulian soon. Like many of us, he enjoys reading the paper in the morning, especially on Sundays. But after he mentioned his plans to subscribe, we ended up in a conversation about the utterly unnecessary (for us) portions of the newspaper. We don't pick up a Montana newspaper for national or international coverage that we read the day before on the Internet.
I'm not sure where news coverage is going. I know that as Hirschorn says, 1) if the current business models fail we will find new ones because the need for news is too great and 2) citizen journalists simply will not (and can not) replace some kind of professional journalism. |
