🠈 The Ownership Project 🠊
The Ownership Project
The initial goal of the Community Color project was to promote local web development and community awareness in select towns in the Mountain West.
I started this project in 2000. Sadly during the last 18 years, I've seen the majority of independently owned web sites fail. While I still seek to promote independent web development, I decided to change the strategy to engage in a broader discussion about ownership in the community.
I sympathize with the "Local First" message. Buying local keeps more money in the community. But rather than just preach a message, I decided to engage in a broader discussion about who owns what.
The Goal
The goal is to create a directory that lists both locally owned and corporate owned businesses. Links for locally owned sites will go directly to the business.
Links for corporate owned businesses will go to a page that shows the history of the corporate ownership.
For example, there is a proposed merger between Sinclair Broadcasting Group and Tribune Media. So I made pages that shows the corporate history for these groups.
The consolidation in media seems to be driven by huge private equity firms. These firms convinced companies to take out huge loans to acquire their competitors. The companies can't repay the loans. They go bankrupt and the private equity firms then stitch together even larger firms.