One of my two egregious examples of a Senator--Ben Cardin (the other being Barbara Mikulski), has an editorial in the Washington Post this morning in which he lays out the rationale for his Newspaper Revitalization Act, one of the loonier pieces of legislation to come out of a our march to socialism.
A couple of things...first of all, there should be NO discussion of the decline of the newspaper industry against the backdrop of the economic crisis. Newspaper readership has been steadily declining through the go-go 90's and the Bush recovery of 2003-2007. The internet is killing newspapers, and that has nothing to do with the economy.
Next, it troubles me that a Senator has decided that government should be picking and choosing winners and losers in the competition to decide how an electorate wishes to inform itself. He (and others) seem to conclude that there is simply no other venue by which people can be as deeply info med of issues than the investigative reporter's published story in a daily broadsheet. This is NONSENSE, and it is supported by no objective research. Cardin compares newspaper coverage to that given on television by 30 minute news channels. He doesn't even speak to the depth available online, nor does he speak to the ridiculous amount of in-depth coverage available on any one of the, oh, I don't know, 600 cable news stations out there?
And how would he accomplish this re-vitalization of newspapers? Why he would effecitvely make them wards of the state, instruments of feckless journalism that would become swamped over in McCain Feingold restrictions as elections neared.
I continue to find Maryland politics difficult to understand. I look at the two Senators the people here elected and I just shake my head.
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I guess I'm not seeing how this is the government picking winners. I'm not saying that it isn't, I'm just admitting my ignorance here.
I guess it might occur if two newspapers in a market were to chose different paths - one still profitable and one not (chooses non-profit status and tax exemption). Is the tax exemption conferred so great that it would give the 501(c)(3) a competitive advantage?
He does say that this plan would require no infusion of taxpayer dollars. If this is true, does tax-exemption make one a "ward of the state?"
Before I totally decried this effort, I would want to know if the public interest for local news wouldn't be adequately served if local newspapers ceased to exist. Also, I'd want to know what the ubiquity of internet service is in a certain locality is before I suggested that online "publishing" only is adequate to keep a well informed populace. Of course, there is the Internetification of America by the Obama administration... and utimately, I'm not sure that local news organizations can't eke out some sort of existence online.
Aside from the News Hour, I am unfamiliar with any other good in-depth news organizations on the air.
Finally, there is such ubiquity of misinformation on the internet, I am concerned that it can and will crowd out factual sources. Of course, the internet will be there to do that regardless of the fate of print papers.
Thinking out loud.
Here is some insight from someone in this industry.
Vertis Communications is one of the largest printers in the country who depends heavily on the health of its main ditribution vehicle, the daily newspaper. Vertis prints newspaper inserts (the stuff that falls out of your Sunday paper) and happens to be HQ'd in Baltimore, MD. Vertis has also recently merged with a similar as insert company, American Color, and just went in and came out of chapter 11.
Follow the money trial....
Separation of church and state should be closely followed by separation of press and state.
The integrity of a newspaper or any news reporting organization that would owe its survival to certain political arms of the government rather than to the quality of its news product would be suspect at best.
Senator Cardin quotes Thomas Jefferson, as saying "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter."
Let me be presumptuous enough to add to Mr. Jefferson's quote, I would never choose a newspaper that survived only through government intervention rather than on the quality and honesty of the news it printed.
By the way, Do not shake your head over the elected officials from Maryland, they shine in comparison to Massachusetts' Kennedy and Kerry
Okay Mr CW Smartypants, if you can show me how to wrap fish, eat hardshell crabs or house train a puppy on a computer screen, then I'll agree that we have no need for newspapers. Otherwise, keep your brilliant ideas to yourself.
And just how am I to stay warm on a cold park bench?
Or block out my wife at breakfast?
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