This past spring, the Columbia Journalism Review convened a panel of top editors and a media investor to discuss the somewhat tiresome topic of the future of newspapers. The situation is undeniably bleak. One need merely consult Romenesko, the media-news aggregator, to witness the freefall in circulation, the unending editorial cutbacks, and the closure of foreign bureaus at so many major metropolitan papers. The panelists—Robert Kuttner, the founding co-editor of The American Prospect; Jim Brady, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com; Amanda Bennett, the executive editor for enterprise at Bloomberg News and the former editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer; Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times; and Steven Rattner, a managing principal of Quadrangle Group LLC, a media investment firm—focused mainly on the need for a new business model, one that would address the rise of the Internet and its negative impact on subscription revenue and advertising, particularly classified. But halfway through the evening, Nicholas Lemann, the dean of Columbia’s journalism school and the panel’s moderator, asked Rattner a surprising question: “What policy interventions would you take to keep institutions like The New York Times and The Washington Post alive if they can’t keep themselves alive in the market?” As the emerging suggestions for mitigating the problems of the publicly traded newspaper—private equity (the Minneapolis Star Tribune), billionaire patronage (Santa Barbara News-Press), and even nonprofit ownership (see Louis Hau’s December 2006 Forbes column on the problems of The St. Petersburg Times)—are proving to have their own unique challenges, the role of government in supporting the press is just beginning to enter the debate. Kuttner, whose March/April cover story in cjr inspired the panel, was somewhat optimistic about the future of the newspaper business. But Rattner, a former journalist, was far less hopeful in his answer to Lemann’s...
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How horrifying!
This piece certainly follows Noam Chomsky’s critique of corporate media: That members of the press cannot truly free themselves from their financial masters.
But what could be worse than government-funded media, in terms of keeping it free? It directly militates against the reason the Founders wanted a free press to exist in the first place: To hold government accountable.
What a frightening and Orwellian thought. I warn the Left now: keeping the New York Times and Washington Post may sound enticing now, but if you succeed in funding the media with taxpayer dollar, and then inevitably warping its coverage in favor of government solutions, expect the Right to take it over as it has the Supreme Court. And then you will live in an awful world: One in which the next George W. Bush controls the - formerly - liberal media.
Be warned.
Posted by chris
on Thu 27 Sep 2007 at 06:07 PM
What amuses me about this is that the gnashing of teeth surrounds the importane of journalism, but what we're really trying to do is save newspapers... just one form of journalism. The devil's advocate might suggest that if print journalism can't compete with online journalism, perhaps it is time for evolution.
Posted by jtcomm
on Fri 28 Sep 2007 at 01:18 PM
Hallin assumes that we have fewer reporters. I assume he means in the "print media" (and, possibly, television). If we assume that anyone who reports news is a reporter then we must include large numbers who post to internet blogs, newgroups, forums, and wikis. No shortage of reporters there.
Posted by eris23
on Sun 30 Sep 2007 at 01:52 AM
When the founding fathers were talking about the press, they meant just that, a printing press. Not media conglomerates. The closest we have to their vision are blogs.
Also, I quit reading when the article started being about what is done in Europe. My ancestors left Europe a long time ago and I really don't care how things are done there.
Posted by John Davies
on Tue 2 Oct 2007 at 04:57 PM
To think that the founders would approve of subsidies for media outlets makes me shudder. Whatever government supports, it eventually winds up controlling. I know do nothing journalists would love subsidies so they can continue producing mediocre work, but they should remember that he who signs the check ultimately controls your work
Posted by TDC
on Wed 3 Oct 2007 at 11:44 AM
We're creating a pro/con article on Debatepedia on this topic. Excuse the fact that it's a little underdeveloped to start, but that's the point.
http://wiki.idebate.org/index.php/Debate:_Should_governments_subsidize_journalism
Posted by Brooks on Fri 1 May 2009 at 12:00 AM
Brooks:
Great article - I will keep an eye on it to see how it progresses.
Larry
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