

Journalism Needs Government Help  - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575324782605510168.html

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hristov
It is somewhat shocking to see this editorial in the wall street journal of
all places.

I have to say I strongly disagree. Subsidized press will just encourage more
conflicts of interest in coverage of politics, will waste taxpayer money, and
is unlikely to result in better journalism.

About newspapers losing money, I suspect the main reason for this, and the
reason nobody mentions is that newspapers and media companies in general
borrowed through the nose to buy out other papers to reduce competition. It is
the interest payments for all that borrowing that is causing most problems in
the top papers.

Otherwise a paper that gets large viewer ship online should not have any
problems funding news gathering.

But nevertheless, it is disturbing to see this in the WSJ. That means it is
seriously being pushed. I hope Obama does not support it, there will be no
profit for him in it, the right wing papers will use this to once again call
him a socialist while still pocketing their subsidy.

~~~
hooande
NPR and PBS seem to have no problem with balanced and insightful journalism,
despite being publically funded. Many people accuse public broadcasting of
having a liberal bias, but in my years of listening I haven't heard that much
if at all. They give fair time to all sides and they rarely favor any
administration. I find it very hard to believe that public radio and
television are a waste of taxpayer money.

For profit news may be in trouble, but journalism will be okay. Most people
don't want informative journalism from foreign bureaus...they want
confirmation of their biases from Fox News or MSNBC.

~~~
bokonist
_Many people accuse public broadcasting of having a liberal bias, but in my
years of listening I haven't heard that much if at all._

The liberal bias of PBS is a matter of what topics they emphasize and which
facts they select. One small example of many - Frontline has done several
documentaries about atrocities committed by American soldiers. But it has
never done a documentary about how ultra-strict (by any standard, of any war,
ever) rules of engagement have caused the death of soldiers. I could come up
with dozens of similar examples. The only way to realize the extent of PBS's
left-wing bias, is to actually read intelligent right wing sources, like
Powerline, View from the Right, or Unqualified Reservations. Otherwise you'll
never know the stories and facts that you are missing.

~~~
danbmil99
This. PBS & NPR's selection bias is much more subtle and well-crafted than
FOX's bang-you-on-the-head agenda, but it's there for anyone with a wide range
of sources to see.

Personally I've always felt publicly financed media is just a bad idea. The
WSJ is just looking for a way to survive, and is willing to throw their
supposed libertarian/free-market principles under a bus to do so. Can't blame
them given that there's been public funding for liberally-slanted news for
decades.

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Groxx
<strikeout>Journalism needs</strikeout> News agencies need government help
_because they fucked up_. Royally. Repeatedly. With technology, with
competition, with content, with Q.A.. As badly as much of the Media industry
has, but they're less entrenched. They have resisted change _so strongly_
they've built up a momentum of _backpedaling_ that probably can't be reversed
enough to even reach stagnation.

Capitalism says "die", I say "good riddance", because something will rise from
the ashes. As long as people want info on (scandal|war|economic|reader's
digest|the history of) X, someone will attempt to provide. Heck, they already
_are_ , we just need to lose the horrendous setup we currently have to allow
the progressive ones to make enough money to continue and improve.

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JacobAldridge
I don't think this is the solution, but not because it will negatively impact
the 'objectivity' of the press. The BP example is strong, and as an ex-jounro
myself who's been around the newsroom, I know that for the vast majority of
writers the memory of a free lunch fades by the time you need to write about
it.

I think this will fail in the way that all welfare-dependent industries must
inevitably fail. If the business model is such that it requires significant,
ongoing government subsidies then it isn't sustainable. You can prop up the US
Auto industry, some agricultural sectors, and even the media for only so long.
If the end result is an inferior product, what's the point?

~~~
sliverstorm
Doesn't the US Postal Service get a ton of subsidies? I rather appreciate
them, and the only reason they may be becoming less relevant is not through a
fault of their own.

~~~
inanimate
The US Postal Service gets virtually no subsidies and is a self-sufficient
organization. It borrows money, however.

"Since its reorganization into an independent organization, the USPS has
become self-sufficient and has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since
the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated
with the disabled and overseas voters. However it is currently borrowing money
from the U.S. Treasury to pay its deficits."

~~~
roboneal
I don't equate "currently borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury to pay its
deficits" as being "self-sufficient".

~~~
inanimate
Then you're using a different definition. In this context, self-sufficiency
refers to its financial and organizational position within the United States
government as an agency to manage its own finances externally from the
Congressional Budget Office and has nothing to do with its bottom line. The
USPS is currently running a deficit but has also ran a surplus:

"Despite record gross revenue of $60.1 billion, the U.S. Postal Service ended
fiscal 1998 on Sept. 30 with a $600 million profit, $100 million more than
projected, but leading industry officials were hoping the USPS could at least
match, if not better fiscal 1997's $1.2 billion surplus, which was less than
the $1.6 billion recorded in 1996 and significantly lower than the $1.8
billion achieved in 1995."
<http://directmag.com/news/marketing_observers_fear_end/>

Corporations borrow money, especially when they run a deficit. Yet unless
they're a larger part of some organization or the government, most people
would call them self-sufficient--the ability to manage their own financial
resources.

Sure the most strict definition of "self-sufficient" is to have absolutely no
reliance on any external entity for anything, but by that definition then not
a single organization in this country is self-sufficient.

~~~
lionhearted
> ended fiscal 1998 on Sept. 30

Wrong decade. They lost 3.8 billion last year and expect to lose billions more
this year [1]. They claim to have operational independence, but the Senate
cuts them a check for losses that the Post Office will never pay back because
its current form becomes less relevant and necessary every year. Fedex and UPS
can do better package shipping, and electronic could take over for almost all
documents now.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/11...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111603629.html)

I say close it down. Auction the assets off, pay post office workers a year or
two's pay for no work to appease them, and give some kind of buyout to people
with pension plans. Keeping the Post Office running to preserve jobs is a
farce and massive waste of important resources.

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GrowWebs
Why not a nonprofit model instead? NPR has been operating successfully on
donations for years! News organizations are already basically not making a
profit. By reorganizing and paying back their debts, they can go back to
focusing on what matters instead of increasing the bottom line.

Why not take the meager revenues that news organizations are currently
earning, deposit them into an endowment and supplement with a huge yearly
fund-raising campaign, or a one time large insanely public grant from the
federal government. If managed responsibly, something like this could sustain
a decently sized news organization for a long time. Especially if we begin to
rethink and reorganize how it might be done.

~~~
roboneal
"a one time large insanely public grant from the federal government"

There is one spot-on word in that phrase: INSANE-ly.

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ajg1977
It would be one thing if news organizations were independent entities, arguing
for government subsidies to remove any conflict of interest from accepting
advertising or corporate ownership. With complete transparency, I would be
fully behind this idea.

However, the suggestions of subsidies that some news organizations are
beginning to float really boil down to "we're losing money in todays market,
and we don't like it.". Aside from keeping their profit margins, it would be
business as usual.

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dantheman
Standard rent seeking behavior, people don't want our product so let's force
them to buy it.

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austiniteye
Since insolvent businesses (banks, newspapers) keep figuring out ways to get
my money using government, I think I need to figure out a way to stop paying
taxes. Problem solved.

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chrismealy
Information is a public good[1] so there's a standard case for subsidizing it.
To preserve choice and competition other folks have proposed giving everybody
a $50 voucher that they can give to the news source of their choice. That
would guarantee a minimum level of aggregate news production but not specify
the particular producers.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good>

~~~
nickpinkston
Haha - the road to economics hell is paved with public goods.

~~~
mkramlich
there are many roads to economic hell, others include Monopoly Highway and the
once scenic Tragedy of the Commons Express

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javajones
If old technologies die out because of newer and better technologies then
that's called progress. Why should the newspapers be immune to this? If they
can't make a product that people want to purchase then they need to adapt or
die.

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usaar333
Perhaps there are just too many newspapers? If 2/3 went bankrupt, wouldn't the
remaining ones have enough increased readership to become profitable again?

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InclinedPlane
I grant the premise that most modern mainstream news organizations would
require subsidies in order to survive unchanged indefinitely.

I refute the notion that this is in any way a desirable state of affairs,
however. The invention of the modern media institutions has been due to
historically anomalous conditions and has largely been deleterious to the
quality of news gathering and dissemination. I won't be sad to see these
dinosaurs dead and gone, replaced with a cacophony of competing and contrary
individual voices serving as mulch for cultivating the capacity for critical
thinking and skeptical inquiry of the modern world's minds.

P.S. <http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html>

