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.