Journalists Looking For Government Money

We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in the Washington Post calls for a solution journalists would likely have scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall' technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."

Comments

We already HAVE gov subsidized media conglomerates

[Anonymous Coward]

The broadcast spectrum monopolies that CBS,NBC,ABC don't pay a cent for and use to ram nonstop propaganda and spam down our throats, plus the entire copyright system (deployment of government power to control what people can do with the information on their own computers). That's many many billions of bucks worth of subsidies, maybe 100's of billions. The cellular phone spectrum monopolies are at least creating revenue, but the broadcast garbage is supposedly a public service.

Shut down broadcast TV completely, I mean all of it, have one govt-operated channel for emergency info but have it show weather reports and/or CSPAN 24/7 unless an actual emergency is taking place. Turn the rest of the spectrum over to low-power unlicensed use (like wifi). If companies want to show cheesy sitcoms, use the internet. And adjust the copyright system to stay out of people's private noncommercial communications, but to clamp down on companies (that means Google, Facebook, etc) cashing in on incidental noncommercial publishing (that means stuff like slashdot comments, that are essentially ephemeral and conversational in nature, but get vacuumed and monetized by 3rd parties who had nothing to do with producing them).

Re:good description

[FutureDomain]

Have you read Pravda lately? Ironically, they sometimes seem to be more insightful than the American media.

Re:There Is No News Crisis

[hairyfeet]

I think the problem is just the opposite, in that they are doing EVERYTHING wrong, because they are still trying to print the same paper they did in 1965, when if you missed the 6 'o clock news you were SOL. The reason I gave up on the local and state papers were the ONLY actual local and state stories were bake sales, who died, which little league team won the local game. That's it. No hard hitting questions, no looking into local or state grafts and corruption, just local "fluffy kitten" stories and the same old AP crap spewed with a hard spin on top to try to make it look like it wasn't a straight copypasta.

I just don't know if they CAN recover, or if they have been so infected with the "too big to fail" mentality, where they think they can just keep churning out the same tired old crap, "maximizing profit potential" by only keeping a few 'reporters" around to add spin and retype press releases, and generally acting the same as when LBJ was president. I bet if you took any of the failing papers and switched them for any of the other failing papers, frankly the readers wouldn't notice.

So I don't know whether the Internet bloggers can take up where they left off, but frankly the "reporting" done by the state and local papers I have read is simply worthless, and is therefor failing because its readers recognize it to be lousy. They simply don't report from what I have seen, at least around here, they just regurgitate and spin. With all the talk about how much we "need" a free press, if this is the sort of free press they are talking about frankly they can keep it.

Re:good description

[jadavis]

the newspapers are folding because people are reading their news online...for free

The WSJ[1], and the Economist[2] are doing just fine. Why are particular publications immune? There must be another explanation.

[1] http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/10/wsj_rising_circulation_offers_glimmer_of.php
[2] http://www.economistgroup.com/our_news/press_releases/2009/results_for_the_year_ended_march_31st_2009.html

Re:Government media CAN be objective and unbiased.

[TheRaven64]

One of the advantages something like the BBC has is that it is too big for government officials to blackball. It an MP goes on Question Time or Newsnight and gets a grilling, then clips from that will show up everywhere. If they then refuse to talk to BBC reporters then that will be reported. The journalistic establishment is quite close nit in London and if you are refusing to talk to some reporters then you can bet that the ones that you will talk to are going to go out of their way to give you a hard time. If you don't talk to any, then they'll just get your opponents to talk about you instead of letting you speak.