Gov't Bailout for Newspapers?

This synthezied article was written by  Gerry Storch, OurBlook.com editor.
It's sadly come down to this for the floundering newspaper industry ...

A University of Pennsylvania law professor and media expert, C. Edwin Baker, actually suggested to a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing April 21 that the government should provide tax subsidies to help pay journalists' salaries.

That's right ... bail out the banks, bail out the auto companies and now bail out the newspapers.

A few other journalists and politicians have floated that balloon as well, and it comes amidst concern about whether we as a nation and our concept of democracy would suffer if newspapers were to go out of business and disappear.

But the downside seems even worse.

"It’s a terrible idea, and it is against the Constitution," says Dr. Douglas Perret Starr, a professor of agricultural journalism at Texas A&M.

"The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights states: 'Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.'

“If government bails out newspapers, even with a blank check (no controls), government will control not only newspapers, but also every other news outlet ... radio, television, World Wide Web, and whatever else the mind of man can invent. Communist and socialist countries have control of the news media as a means of controlling the people. In such situations, the people will know only what government wants them to know."

Mickey Alam Khan, editor in chief of Mobile Marketer, a trade publication in New York, also opposes a bailout.

"Not a good idea," he says. "Government should not control media. That’s what happens in Russia and Venezuela and other tinpot dictatorships. Newspapers will have to figure out their own business model. If they take government dollars, they will surrender the right to speak freely and without fear."

If you're taking money from the government, you can't keep an eye on it. Even if there were a screening mechanism ... a kind of buffer board in between to shield the journos from the politicos ... it doesn't take much imagination to envision a time when a congressperson or staffer or bureaucrat will put the pressure on behind the scenes to attain positive coverage or stave off negative coverage, using the threat of a curtailed subsidy. Newspapers would forfeit whatever shred of public trust they have remaining
In fact, there might be problems even in reporting the terms of a bailout, as the papers themselves might want to keep their financial information private and confidential. Talk about tying yourself in a knot ...

"If the federal government opted to include loans to the media in a bailout plan, the issue of prior restraint could become problematic," says Cailin Brown, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Communications, The College of Saint Rose, Albany, N.Y. "How would the industry report about the deals? Would all of the information get included, would some get left out because of the proprietary nature of the industry?"

Consider also that many people feel America's newspapers were basically in the tank for Obama with slanted coverage during last year's presidential election. As Washington Post ombudsman Janet Howell wrote after the election, “I'll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did.”

If papers were now to take a bailout from the Obama administration, wouldn't it have the look ... and smell ... of a payoff?

Worse yet, and this is reason No. 2 why a federal bailout would be terrible, with the hands-off arrangement removed, some secretly or not so secretly politically active reporters would welcome working in cahoots with their like-minded colleagues in government to achieve their pet social goals through planted articles or selective release of information. The readers, and the editors, would be the last to know of any such clandestine arrangements.

Thus, a bailout would corrupt both sides ... the government and the newspapers.

Now we come to the tricky part. The fact is, the U.S. taxpayers have been bailing out two of the media for years. They're called National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. They get federal dollars and lots of them ... about $400 million worth a year, in fact ... if these are editorial successes, why wouldn't the same method be OK for print?

Both NPR and PBS indeed have their legions of devoted fans. Unfortunately, they also are mistrusted or ignored by most conservatives and many in the middle except for the (hopefully) nonpolitical dramas and cultural programs they run. The federal handouts should stop; let them depend on their fundraising pledge drives and the advertising they already do to create their budgets.

All this being said, do we just throw up our hands about the future of newspapers?

Actually, no. A rough consensus seems to be emerging that papers should 1) keep a still-lucrative weekend print edition but switch to Internet-only during the week, 2) focus ferociously on local and regional news, and 3) charge for their web site offerings either through a subscription or micropayments for each article clicked on.

Beyond that, in a special project on the newspaper bailout issue by our public affairs discussion/media analysis web site, www.ourblook.com, several more specific suggestions emerged.

"My instinct (on a bailout) is to say: Not on your life!," says Prof. Charlotte Grimes, who holds the Knight Chair in Political Reporting at the Newhouse School, Syracuse University.

"But newspapers need some life support these days ... or at least we need life support for the kind of journalism that mostly comes from newspapers. And historically, we have had some limited government support.

"For example, the Postal Act of 1792 created the U.S. Post Office AND gave favorable postage rates to newspapers, because the founders realized that a fragile democracy needed the free flow of news to survive. And the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 exempted newspapers from anti-trust laws so that they could share some business resources ... such as ad departments ... and keep competitive newsrooms operating in the same town.

"Government MIGHT ... and I stress the MIGHT ... be able to do some things like tax breaks for newspapers as they adapt to the digital revolution, tax breaks for start-ups of new news organizations ... online or in print ... or tax breaks for the wonderful brave souls willing to buy a going-out-of-business newspaper and willing to have it fulfill its purpose of giving people what they need to know to stay free and self-governing."

Thus, there might be viable government help for newspapers if it was a part of something available to all businesses.

Viewing newspapers not in a vacuum but as part of a spectrum with radio, TV and new media helps lead to a couple other ideas.

-- Working with radio: "Lifting the newspaper / broadcast cross-ownership ban could benefit both newspaper and radio industries; however, rather than serving as an open-ended gift to media conglomerates, repealing the ban should be tied to stricter radio ownership limits," says Michael Saffran, adjunct professor of communication at Rochester Institute of Technology.

"According to an FCC study, newspaper/television station cross-ownership enhances the quantity and quality of TV news and public-affairs programming. Radio could similarly benefit from partnerships between broadcasters and publishers because most newspapers (with a few notable exceptions) are, much like radio, inherently local.

"Thus, the addition of print reporters to the small news staffs (if they exist at all) of cross-owned radio stations could enhance local-radio news ... an area in which local radio is currently underperforming, according to many experts. Local newspapers (along with broadcast stations) could realize economies of scale, increased cross-promotional opportunities, and heightened visibility within local communities (as “faceless” newspaper bylines transform into “disembodied” radio voices, and vice versa). "

-- Blend video into reporters' content on the web. "The one small piece of good news out of Internet monetization is that web users consider a 10- or 15-second ad that precedes watching a video to be a fair price to pay for free content," says Paul Conti, instructor in communications at The College of Saint Rose and former news director of NBC affiliate WNYT.

"They ignore most banner ads. They ignore the fly outs on web sites. They click away from 'cover over' ads. They will sit and watch the 10- or 15-second ads that precede video.

"If I were newspaper companies, I’d be looking at ways to hire some of the TV reporters and producers who have been laid off. That’s their expertise and many of the victims were very experienced. I realize many newspapers are in no financial condition to do it. Frankly, they should have been moving in this direction three years ago."

And if papers don't make it?

To lose even one major paper "will diminish the intellectual lead that America has had over the rest of the world," says Mickey Alam Khan. "A population that is not well-read will not think critically. Newspapers, be they in print or online or on mobile, offer edited, moderated and unbiased news and balanced opinion so necessary for debating between good choices and bad in personal life and at work."

"The United States as we know it will disappear; it will no longer be a nation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," adds Texas A&M's Prof. Starr. "One by one, all of our freedoms will disappear; the Bill of Rights, of freedoms, will be meaningless because there will be no freedom of speech or of the press. Without a free press, there will be no one to keep an eye on the government and to tell the people what the government is doing and is planning to do."

But there's a glimmer of hope. Even on campus, not everyone is ready to write obituaries for papers yet.

"My students do seem to care if newspapers survive," says Marti Harvey, faculty member and student newspaper advisor for the Eastfield College EtCetera in Mesquite, Texas. "In the past we have talked about going to web-only news due to soaring printing costs, but the uproar from students has quelled that talk. I still see students sitting at tables with laptops; however, they are reading the print edition of the campus newspaper. It's something they can save and it seems they see it as a more official record of campus events than the Internet versions of the same content."

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