Tuesday Newsday: Aspirations Wrapped Up In Books

As weeks go, this one hasn't been the best for the newspaper industry, and it's only Tuesday. The Chicago Sun-Times filed for bankruptcy today, and according to a Monday rumor, the venerable New York Times will soon be eliminating its City section and regional weeklies.

Newspapers need money, but more importantly, they need buyers -- people willing to invest time and energy in reenergizing and reinventing the business model that so many have failed at. So, in lieu of giving in to the man and accepting bailout funds, here's a solution: let's buy them ourselves.

At least that's Andrew Dunn's plan. Dunn, a journalism student at the University of North Carolina, runs the Web site Let's Buy A Newspaper, where, since January, journalists have been pledging money to -- you guessed it -- buy one of the country's various struggling papers. The now-defunct, almost universally beloved Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News were once first on the site's list of potential purchases. That list now includes papers like the Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

On the site's "About" page, Dunn admits that he started the site on a whim when the news broke about the Post-Intelligencer but would be open to following through on the experiment if enough pledges come through.

Yes, only $28,000 has been pledged to save newspapers that are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, the site might be a little too idealistic for its own good. Yes, there's almost no chance that Dunn's endearingly bare-bones site will actually manage to buy a paper of its own.

But at the same time, click around the site and you'll find a bunch of concerned, intelligent journalists discussing new practices in newsroom management, laying out a business plan and outlining a payroll for 20 reporters and seven editors. It's kind of like playing house -- what would we do with a whole newspaper of our own? -- but already, contributors are putting forth ideas about investors, advertising and potential locations. Reporters and editors from publications as venerable as the New York Times and as small-scale as college newspapers are pledging $50 and $500 and $5,000 if the project gets off the ground.

Maybe it's wishful thinking; maybe it's a shot in the dark. But that's what new media is about: taking a crazy idea that just might work and seeing where it goes. At the very least, Let's Buy a Newspaper is bringing together print journalists across the country to talk about the future and share ideas in a time when ideas are all we have left.

And if the whole thing does work out, they can have my $50, any day.