Obama open to newspaper bailout bill

By GottaLaff

You know what worries me a little? Here's what: When online news sources begin charging a fee, it will cut into TPC's access. If Paddy and I were to have to subscribe to each and every newspaper we can currently read regularly, we'd go broke in about 5 minutes.

Oh wait. We're already broke.

With a hard copy, one person can subscribe, then pass it on to a friend or family member. I suppose that could happen on line, too. For example, when the New York Times started charging for their op-eds, I remember digging around until I found a site or two that posted snippets of Frank Rich's or Maureen Dowd's or whomever's columns.

Eventually they stopped charging.

Anyway, sometimes these invaluable sources would go so far as to post the entire piece, which made me feel like I'd hit a gold mine. I'd often have to open a bottle of some exotic alcoholic beverage to celebrate such an occasion.

Actually, I'd do that anyway. In fact, I may do that right now. But I digress:

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin's Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D). [...]

Obama said that good journalism is "critical to the health of our democracy," but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting -- especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," he said.

HEY! WHO'S SHOUTING!?

I'm not sure if a proposal like that would do much good, nor whether we'd still end up getting charged for use. I do know that I am saddened by what's happened to the news industry as a whole, and newspapers specifically.

Meanwhile, I guess I'll just KEEP SHOUTING and omit any serious fact-checking or context. After all, misinformation is our business, and here at TPC, we excel at it.

Journalism: Bail it out or write it off

By GottaLaff

I've noticed Rosa Brooks' absence from my L.A. Times lately, and it concerned me. She's even been missing from The Rachel Maddow Show, where she used to appear regularly. What happened? We finally have an explanation.

There's the good news and the bad news. The bad news is, today Rosa Brooks wrote her last column for the L.A. Times. The good news?

After four years, I'll soon be starting a stint at the Pentagon as an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy.

Bravo! I've always loved her writing, and I'll miss her like crazy, but, hey, who can blame her after getting a job like that?

Okay, celebration time is over. Now here is the reason for her op-ed:

Some might say I have a "new job," but because I'll be escaping a dying industry -- and your tax dollars will shortly be paying my salary -- I prefer to think of it as my personal government bailout.

Like everyone else whose livelihood is linked to the newspaper industry, I've been watching, appalled, as newspapers continue their death spiral, with dwindling circulations and thousands of layoffs. Here at The Times, the editorial staff is down to almost half the size it was in 2000. [...]

Still, I knew it was time to pray for a government bailout in December, when my editor explained that because the paper's parent company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, I might not get paid for my recent columns. From a legal perspective, he told me, I wasn't a columnist -- I was an "unsecured creditor" of Tribune Co. (Along with other freelancers, [...]

Of course, I'm not taking a government job only because I feel lucky to parachute out before some cost-cutter eliminates every last column. At this moment in history, I can't imagine anything more rewarding than being part of the new team that's shaping U.S. policy.

But as I say goodbye to my wonderful Times colleagues, I also can't imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed.

For me, this is the key paragraph:

If newspapers become mostly infotainment websites -- if the number of well-trained investigative journalists dwindles still further -- and if we're soon left with nothing but the yapping heads who dominate cable "news" and talk radio, how will we recognize, or hope to forestall, impending national and global crises? How will we know if government officials have made terrible mistakes, as even the best will sometimes do? How will we know if government officials have told us terrible lies, as the worst have sometimes done? A decimated, demoralized and under-resourced press corps hardly questioned the Bush administration's flimsy case for war in Iraq -- and the price for that failure will be paid for generations.

It's time for a government bailout of journalism. [...]

Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off or bail out, leaving us with nothing in our newspapers but ads, entertainment features and crossword puzzles.

Don't let it happen.

I edited this piece substantially, so please read the rest here.

Cartoon of the Day

Related- Sun-Times Media Group files for Chapter 11. Via. Click to enlarge.

Senator proposes non-profit status for newspapers

By GottaLaff

I'm a big fan of newspapers, and hate to see them folding (no pun), one after the other. Hey! Here's a thought:

As a growing number of American newspapers halt daily publication or threaten to do so, U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin introduced legislation Tuesday that would allow newspapers to operate as non-profit organizations, providing significant tax breaks to the struggling industry.

The winner: Miss Information; The loser: Us

By GottaLaff

All those newspapers closing down and/or cutting back is bad news (no pun) for everyone. The unfortunate result is that the crown is going to Miss Information. What exactly are we missing? What aren't we hearing? What don't we know? Too much:

Political consultants aren't exactly rubbing their hands together and snickering. But as the hired guns look over a landscape of closing newspapers and laid-off investigative reporters, they sense an opening that leaves them both excited and queasy.

One operative told me this week about planting attacks on opponents in partisan blogs, knowing the stories could bleed into mainstream news outlets, without leaving any incriminating fingerprints. Another described how he got green reporters to write stories (no campaign cash wasted!) on ads that the candidate had no intention of ever paying to put on TV.

"They don't know any better," the consultant chuckled. "So we can get away with that one again."

Gulp.

"Imagine driving along [Interstate] 5. There used to be a couple highway patrolmen to keep people in line. Now they're gone and everyone knows it," said Chris Lehane, a veteran Democratic consultant. "It can devolve into a Mad Max situation pretty quickly."

Dan Schnur, a one-time Republican consultant who directs USC's Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics:

"Technology and blogs and the like make it much easier to get information out," he said. "But what is missing is the credibility that comes with that message coming through the mainstream media."

The "mainstream media"aren't exactly reliable or unbiased, but let's move along...

Newspapers [havd] slashed their staffs, often losing the most experienced (and highest-paid) reporters, because of a ghastly recession and advertising lost to the Internet.

The severity of the problem is hard to assess. How do you get your arms around what hasn't been written? [...]

Wouldn't a more robust reporting corps have delved by now into gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman's stock trades when she headed EBay? [...] [I]n the old days, one operative said, someone would have checked by now. [...]

One political consultant told me he regularly encounters less-experienced (and more easily bamboozled) reporters when he works on state and congressional campaigns. He was the one who told me the newbies often didn't bother to check whether ads were really going to have any serious presence on television. The net effect: He got thousands of dollars worth of "free" media, exposing the public to ads the politician would never pay to put on the air. [...]

Yet I fear much of this is lost on the public. I don't know whether to be depressed or infuriated by the folks who occasionally e-mail me, gleeful that another newspaper will cut its staff. [...]

What political and news veterans feel in their guts, a couple of Princeton economists said they have confirmed.

The two researchers found that, after the Cincinnati Post closed at the end of 2007, fewer candidates participated in local elections, incumbents had a greater advantage and voter turnout declined [...] Politics in suburban northern Kentucky communities became less "vibrant" for the loss of that single paper, despite the fact that its 27,000 daily circulation was dwarfed by the city's dominant Cincinnati Enquirer.

Here's hoping the new websites and community blogs that we keep hearing about will pick up the slack some time soon. In the meantime, the political pros have more control. And we have less information. Some folks seem to have no idea what they're missing.

Miss Information wins. Not even runners-up: Accurate and thorough reporting. Coming in last: An informed public. That glued-on smile on Miss Congeniality's (aka Democracy) face? It's fading.

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