From John Nichols and Robert McChesney in The Nation
What to do about newspapers? Let’s give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial “news hole,” say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising. In effect, this means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper–this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money. This will buy time for our old media newsrooms–and for us citizens–to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era. We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well.
I say this with all due respect: Shut the fuck up. A newspaper tax credit? Are you kidding me? The news industry’s current state of fail would in all likelihood be occuring even if the economy was in a boom time. The ones destined to die need to just die. These papers have, in the last 20 years or so, done far more harm by virtue of shoddy journalism or neglect than the good they’ve done. The good ones with good writers will survive in one way or another without a freaking tax credit.
The beloved news media presided over the trashing of President Clinton, the election and re-election of George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq, and beyond without batting an eye. The existing news media has been an active irritant on our democracy. They could do with a good smash up about now.
There’s nothing wrong with public media. In fact, Frontline is easily the best news program on television. But this is so far out of the purview of the government it isn’t even funny. There’s at least a rational case to be made for government intervention in the auto, banking, and other vital industries. But newspapers? Tax credit?
Please. This kind of hand-wringing just makes The Nation look really stupid.
Let. Them. Die.
Nonsense, OW! Not only should we have a tax credit for newspapers, but also for sealing wax, rotary dial telephones, and kerosene lanterns. And buggy whips too!
And Betamax video tape recorders!!
Oliver would surely back a tax credit for any purchase remotely related to Jessica Alba.
Now that’s babe-a-rebate-o-luscious change I can believe in!
Shit, how long do they need? It’s not like digital media showed up just last year.
Let me just invert and expand on one paragraph:
The beloved news media presided over the trashing of President Clinton, the election and re-election of George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq, and beyond without batting an eye. The existing news media has been an active irritant on our democracy. They could do with a good smash up about now.
The beloved news media presided over the election and re-election of Bill Clinton, the nearly non-stop trashing of George W. Bush, constantly repeated lies about the invasion of Iraq, shilled shamelessly for John Kerry, and helped engineer the election of Barack Obama. The existing news media has been an active irritant on our democracy. They could do with a good smash up about now.
With that slight modification, I would cheerfully sign a petition outlining the rest.
J.
constantly repeated lies about the invasion of Iraq,
Actually, you got this part right, but probably not in the way you thought.
Actually, you got this part right, but probably not in the way you thought.
“Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller’s series of exclusives about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—courtesy of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi—helped the New York Times keep up with the competition and the Bush administration bolster the case for war. How the very same talents that caused her to get the story also caused her to get it wrong.”
the nearly non-stop trashing of George W. Bush
You mean by fluffing him every chance they got? The press didn’t catch on until long after the public had.
Investigative journalism is crucial to a democracy. The founders understood that and it’s why there was a special provision in the Constitution protecting “the press.” As I understand it, there was also (until recently) a special provision allowing “bulk mail” to be essentially subsidized to do precisely what you’re decrying: facilitate the growth of a vibrant “press.”
There is a VERY RATIONAL reason why a Democracy would encourage “The Press:” WITHOUT “THE [free] PRESS” DEMOCRACY FAILS.
“The Press” (”the media”) is free speech incarnate. It’s the essence of liberty.
The intertubes haven’t taken up the investigative journalism that newspapers have and still do provide. Despite what Quacks are selling, “newspapers” are still not (yet) “buggy whips.”
So The Nation suggests a pittance of a tax credit to encourage part of the life blood of Democracy: a vibrant Press. It’s specifically addressed as helping “buy time for our old media newsrooms–and for us citizens–to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era” and even suggest that “We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well.”
Considering that the intertubes has failed to find a way of properly paying for good investigative journalism it seems like something a Democracy would at least consider.
This is different than the right wings tax credit to help sell Hummers. That was essentially a gift to the 2 percenters and encouraged the wrong type of car to be manufactured (gas guzzlers during increasing oil scarcity).
A $200 tax credit is something a majority of tax payers would be able to use, and they would be able to chose Murdoch’s Republican Journal or even (gasp) a credible, local, independent newspaper. If the “online subscriptions” idea evolved, maybe taxpaying citizens could “spend” the tax credit on Media Matters or even World Nut Daily.
The larger complaint is that it would inadvertently supplement already profitable mega-media conglomerates. But media control and ownership limits are a different conversation.
Oliver, your complaints about the media have more to do with ownership and control of media by a handful of what Digby calls “The Villagers” who don’t represent the diversity of opinions a flourishing press would (should) provide.
Your complaints about the “news media” are only going to get worse as struggling newspapers “die” or are eaten by the giant media/monoculture/corps.
The Nation’s notion surely isn’t any worse than letting a complicit GE/CNBC receive $140 billion in bailout money even while hyping the fraudsters that lied US into the financial crisis.
….
Oliver, the belief that “The good ones [newspapers] with good writers will survive in one way or another” seems to be belied by the fact that the news corps WERE, as you point out, able to preside “over the trashing of President Clinton, the election and re-election of George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq, and beyond without batting an eye.”
Big news corps were able to ignore the interests of the public because the big corps (whose growth was enabled by Republican deregulation legislation signed by Clinton) didn’t allow for a broad diversity of opinions to be aired in their spheres of control.
Disney/GE/Viacom/Murdoch control a profound amount of American media even while severely limiting the diversity of views expressed within their properties. Throw in Infinity/ClearChannel and a handful of other media conglomerates and eventually a critical eye will start to realize just how much of a media-monoculture there is in the US.
Sure, it’s different for internet-news addicts (like yourself), you’re reading The Nation online. The Nation has regularly provided a platform for contrarian ideas. Sure, the contrarian ideas in The Nation won’t be comfortable to the frogs that have been slowly boiled by the media monoculture, but that’s not much of an excuse to trash it.
Mr. Reference seems to think that the only way to disseminate information is on large sheets of paper covered with dots of ink.
No one here is disputing the need for a free press. However, newspapers are now failing just as miserably as “the intertubes” at finding away to make their business model pay.
Consider this: imagine a parallel society, exactly like ours, but without news media. You’re tasked with finding a way to gather information, distribute it, and make it profitable. Would you actually choose “run off several hundred thousand hard copies and distribute them through a heavily labor-intensive network of agents”?
Dude.
It’s the 21st century. Transporting physical objects as carriers of data has been dying since the invention of the telegraph. This is just the latest turn in the road.
Let them die? Even Family Circle? Or Beetle Bailey? Or Marmaduke? **sniff**
I’m a newbie to this site, and while I like it so far, I have to ask: Once all the newspapers disappear, what will guys like you have to write about?
News will still happen and be reported on even if the beloved newspapers die like the dinosaurs they are.
Let them die? Even Family Circle? Or Beetle Bailey? Or Marmaduke?
Yes, by golly. And I’ll get your little cat Garfield too! Mwahahahaha!
“shilled shamelessly for John Kerry”
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!! Jay, please lay off the Oxycontin Rush sent you. (Remember the wind-surfing pics?)
That said, journalism is sick, but it isn’t dead. However, newspapers and magazines (those printed on dead tree pulp are very dead. And I shall shed no tears. Because nobody fucking needs them, and they kill too many trees.
J.G.Thayer: “With that slight modification, I would cheerfully sign a petition outlining the rest.”
You have no connection to reality, do you?
Jay Tea: constantly repeated lies about the invasion of Iraq
No doubt what you’re referring to there are things like “WMD”, Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks and that uranium Iraq was getting from Niger…
Let’s slow down on burying the old newspaper. Without newspapers many, if not most seniors, would rely on TV and we know how poorly they cover the news.
And frankly I don’t look forward to carrying my PC into the bathroom.
Quaker, news”papers” are still where the bulk of investigative journalism comes from. That’s just a fact.
Sure, some of that “print” “ink” spills over into ether-pixels that intertubers can click on, but it almost* always STARTS with a good investigative journalist working for a PRINT publication.
The Nation’s radical idea in maintaining America’s Democracy by maintaining a vibrant “press” was to “buy time for our old media newsrooms–and for us citizens–to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era.”
Intertopians like yourself haven’t figured out that the “digital era” still hasn’t trumped other media and even given time other media will survive.
More importantly, the internet hasn’t (yet) provided a revenue model for sustained investment in investigative journalism. Newspapers and print publications like Magazines have been the primary media that made that investment. And then that PRINT journalism was re-reported on TV (which was supposed to supplant ink on paper) or re-reported on radio (which was supposed to supplant ink on paper).
While radio and TV do do some good investigative reporting, proportionally it’s only a tiny fraction of what print publications have done.
As for the complaints about the news media’s failures, keep in mind that while Republican Cheney’s tool Libby was playing footsie with the NYT’s Judith Miller, news PRINT reporters at McClatchy were scooping everyone.
But because the big-media-corp monoculture only had a few national outlets that the right wing needed to control to control the message, the Republican administration only had to manipulate the New York Times, the Washington POst, and the Wall Street Journal and nearly everyone else fell in line.
Right winger Cheney’s foot soldier Libby pulled Miller’s strings and then Cheney showed up on GE/NBC’s Meet the Press to continue to “shape” the message with the corporate tool Russert.
McClatchy newsPAPERS were able to pay print reporters to stay on the story and develop the contacts needed to get the Iraq story RIGHT. Those PRINT reporters are a huge reason WHY we now know what we know about how the right wing lied US into the Iraq war with falsified intel.
At best, intertopians like yourself were able to link to the well-researched McClatchy print reporters story online. Or even better, read about it your local McClatchy newsPAPER.
By buying your local newspaper you ARE DIRECTLY SUBSIDIZING GOOD JOURNALISM.
As much as I absolutely believe a link online helps McClatchy and other good journalism outlets, it’s still not the same thing as directly paying them for 96 thin slices of a dead tree.
*Just to be clear “almost” isn’t always. There are a handful all-digital investigative reporters, but that’s not even a tiny fraction of the number of investigative reporters that have been fired by “print” publications in the just the last year, let alone the last decade.
News Reference Johnson is right!
No, he’s not.
“By buying your local newspaper you ARE DIRECTLY SUBSIDIZING GOOD JOURNALISM.”
No, you are not. The last small American town I lived in had a rag that was complete shit. At best, it was just a sound-board for the local corrupt politicians and business interests.
You know who killed newspapers? Newspapers killed newspapers back in the 70’s and 80’s when they decided to go down the “info-tainment” route.
Fuck ‘em. Good riddance. There are much better sources of journalism on-line anyhow, and much better sources of opinion as well.
Buh-bye.
Give me a tax credit to buy a kindle and I’ll pay for the newspaper subscriptions myself.
More importantly, the internet hasn’t (yet) provided a revenue model for sustained investment in investigative journalism. Newspapers and print publications like Magazines have been the primary media that made that investment.
And newsp…uh, news”papers” haven’t yet provided a revenue model that will keep most of them alive through the next 10 or 15 years. Newspapers are facing the same dilemma as record companies. As long as they cling to their outdated modes of delivering content, they’re going to continue to lose market share. No amount of government subsidy will change that.
The costs of delivering dead trees to subscribers’ front doors have become prohibitive. When it comes to journalism, I’ll side with the free marketeers. Subsidies for failing business models hide their true costs and put new alternatives at a disadvantage.
And that’s “just a fact.”
Newspapers killed newspapers back in the 70’s and 80’s when they decided to go down the “info-tainment” route.
Jaim, you might be giving newspaper readers too much credit there. But the “infotainment” trend has long been one of my bigger complaints also.
Our local Rocky Mountain News just closed up shop. Their staff was clogged with a bunch of rather settled, unindustrious specialists who drew fat salaries to turn out one or two stories a week. They had a food editor, a classical music and dance reporter, two lifestyles editors, an entertainment editor, an architecture reporter, a film critic, and a books editor.
And that was just the features section. Most of these people (well, the ones who actually created content) wrote about arcane subjects that supposedly gave the paper prestige or wrote cute, self-referential crap.
And don’t even get me started on the “columnists.”
That’s a buttload of overhead to carry just to preserve “investigative” reporting.
People don’t want to get newsprint on their hands and clothes anymore and read outdated stories. Fuck the papers for not having the vision to get their shit online
Writing. Like. This. Is. Gay.
So Jaim, don’t buy what you call “complete shit” and instead buy something you think is worthwhile. You could help employ Jay Tea by buying the right wing Commentary Magazine.
What’s perverse is that many newspapers are actually profitable. For example, before the Tribune bought the LATimes with Zell’s leveraged debt it was reported that the LATimes was making a %20 profit. But Zell/Tribune corp bought it with leveraged debt and then squeezed the LATimes to pay that debt off.
Right winger Zell bought a profitable, decent paper and squeezed it. Fired good reporters. Saddled his debt on a functioning media outlet.
The plan was to gut an exceptional news outlet that was a rival to national papers. Zell sucked the LATimes like a vampire. And the jackals were delighted.
This venom against newspapers makes me ill.
Zell is awesome. He managed to take a profitable paper (LA Times) to its death while leveraging the employees of the LA Times to make his acquisition. The Zell Man is total AIG material with his convoluted scheming and acquisition via revenue loss to shareholders/employees. He took no risk which was brilliant and evil at the same time.
Seriously, Zell is a con-artist without any of the comedy in “The Sting” as he robs families, futures, careers and would definitely take the lollipop from the kid in the stroller. Complete scammer.
“So Jaim, don’t buy what you call ‘complete shit’ and instead buy something you think is worthwhile.”
Why should I buy anything? News is free. And hence, we have the root of the problem. Newspapers failed to see the internet coming, or at least tried to adjust too late. Coupled with the fact that the standards for journalism have plummeted, especially during the Bush II years, and you have a recipe for the death of the newspaper.
As for the LA Times, they pay good money to Jonah Goldberg for his “opinion” on things. I think you might be over-rating their operation.
Jaim, as for your pointing out the plummeting standards of journalism and “news is free,” my point is that those things are partially correlated.
You’re getting what you paid for and yet you’re still complaining about it.
“Better” standards in journalism cost money. The trouble is, billionaire right wingers have been collecting good journalism outlets and crushing them. Zell with the Tribune corp, Murdoch with the Wall Street Journal.
As for Jonah Goldberg, I’m pretty sure Goldberg got hired on after Sam Zell bought the Tribune corp.
It’s funny though, the right wing family that used to own the Wall Street Journal had built up a very credible newspaper that (pre-Murdoch) I would often buy. Sure, the editorial pages were crazy right wing nonsense, but in general anything that wasn’t on the editorial pages you could trust to have been carefully vetted.
It made me alternately sad and angry that they sold out to Murdoch. But they were the new generation of right wingers: willing to sell out early instead of taking the true, old-school (paleolithic) conservative path and patiently let an investment mature. Greedy children with no sense of honoring a family legacy.
They sold out the gold standard of journalism to the malignant huckster of hate, Murdoch. The day Murdoch bought the WSJ one of America’s brilliant lights was snuffed out forever.
These days when I see someone reading the Wall Street Journal in public it’s hard not to mock them. Nearly all of the credible WSJ journalists have already jumped ship, leaving for the Financial Times or The Economist or the NYTimes.
Any “journalists” left at the WSJ either weren’t good enough to move or are okay being hack propagandists.
Newspapers are a localized advertising monopoly subsidizing journalism (of uneven quality, varying from location to location). Newspapers were not killed by blogs or shoddy journalism (though those helped push things along).
They were killed by Craig’s List.
Journalism will be just fine, but it has to find a better subsidy model. The advertising subsidy that newspapers provide journalism is gone; it is not coming back. What is more likely is that we will see stuff like the AP model where news agencies (many of the nonprofit, some of them advocacy) employ journalists, and distribute their stories to various news outlets.
The LA Times was inconsequential nationally before Sam Zell bought it. The WSJ’s opinion section was apeshit lunacy before Rupert Murdoch bought it. The newspaper industry as we know it is the horseless carriage in the automobile era. They need to adapt to the 21st century.
More importantly, the internet hasn’t (yet) provided a revenue model for sustained investment in investigative journalism.
Oh, I dunno, Josh Marshall and to a lesser extent Huffpo are doing good things besides just commentary. I wish we’d let up on the supposed so-called magical wizardry of MSM investigative reporting. So much of the time the result is overwritten stuff more interested in winning Pulitzers than in informing the audience.
If the paper uncovers something systematic and important, maybe they should slap it on A1 with an interesting headline and a 500 word story rather than holding it for Sunday and a 10,000 word monstrosity.
The LATimes was in the running as a national newspaper for a long time. Even a decade ago they were in the top 10, maybe even making the cut in the top five national newspapers before the Tribune Corp and then Zell sucked out it’s eminence.
The WSJ’s lunacy used to be kept on the editorial pages, now Murdoch’s slithering that nonsense onto the front page.
Credit goes to Josh Marshall. He’s done some exceptional investigative reporting. But even his breaking the US attorneys scandal was largely a synthesis of other newspapers articles. He might have built a mosaic but he couldn’t have done it without the pieces developed by numerous local newspaper outlet’s reporting.
As for HuffPo, they’re still an opinion outlet that largely relies on linking to real investigative journalism (and getting in some trouble for snipping too much).
The one (1) journalist at HuffPo is Sam Stein and he’s great and the best part of HuffPo.
But right at this moment, the HuffPo front page has only a single article by their lone journalist, Sam Stein: “Meghan McCain Knocks Obama For Going On Leno (And Gets Her Facts Wrong).”
That’s the piece by Stein that HuffPo is pushing on the front page: Obama’s Leno appearance being criticized by Meghan McCain. He’s done better, ironically even since that article, but none of his most recent articles are on the front page.
Meanwhile, HuffPo links to the NYTimes, Reuters, and Yahoo, along with HuffPo’s trademark cut and paste a page from CNN, FT, and others. It does appear that HuffPo is paying the AP to host the AP’s stories in their entirety.
Investigative reporting is IMPORTANT and Josh Marshall and Sam Stein don’t make up for the gutting of local journalism outlets.
Walker’s point above is right, Craig Newmark’s “Craig’s List” really killed local online advertising for local newspapers. To listen to Newmark pontificating about the news industry just makes me ill.
Apparently he has a lot of allies ecstatic about the destruction of local news sources.
The destruction of the news industry is not good for Democracy, it’s not good for America, and it’s sure as hades isn’t good for Americans.
Walker’s point above is right, Craig Newmark’s “Craig’s List” really killed local online advertising for local newspapers.
Yes, how dare Craig Newmark innovate when the news industry refused to. They had multiple opportunities to re-invent the classifieds process yet dithered. Newmark came in and provided a service that people wanted to use. The nerve of that guy!
To listen to Newmark pontificating about the news industry just makes me ill.
Why? Because he might out-innovate them again? The current fashion seems to be bringing back pay news (their first failed model). Newspapers need to cut the bloat in their staffs, invest in good reporters and get out of the pontificating and columnist business, give those reporters the freedom to post the news and produce good – relevant and interesting – content.
Do I hate newspapers? Far from it. But as I said above, they are a risk-averse and non-innovative industry trying to pull a William F. Buckley yelling “stop” at a world that is moving on.
They’re trying to convince us to buy typewriters in a digital world.
The LATimes journalist James Rainey helps make the point: “Newspaper cuts open door to more political trickery.”
“One operative told me this week about planting attacks on opponents in partisan blogs, knowing the stories could bleed into mainstream news outlets, without leaving any incriminating fingerprints. Another described how he got green reporters to write stories (no campaign cash wasted!) on ads that the candidate had no intention of ever paying to put on TV.”
The Economist snips the same piece with the lede, “WITH the American newspaper industry collapsing, and no equal number of investigative media opening up to replace them, there would seem to be some people having an easier time of things: Liars.”
The irony of James Rainey’s LATimes piece is that the LATimes is literally housing an example of exactly what the journalist is decrying: a political operative insinuating false stories into the main stream media. In the LATimes case it’s Republican public relations agent Andrew Malcolm.
Andrew Malcolm is the perfect example of a “pontificating” “columnist” that gets way more attention and clicklove precisely because he’s a political attack hack.
Because the LATimes doesn’t feel the need to ‘fact check’ Andrew Malcolm’s ‘blogging’ or even hold him to a minimal standard of ‘truth’ the LATimes actually gets more writing out of him, and on the internet, “more” is fast becoming “better” than “true.”
The “pontificating and columnist business” is cheaper for newspapers (offline and online) especially when they’re “competing” with pure advertisers like Craig Newmark. My complaint about Newmark is that he makes noise pretending to not be doing what he’s doing. And he’s been making noise for years pretending he might try to remedy it what he pretends he’s not doing. Newmark’s dishonest.
It’s one thing for Newmark to provide an innovative service, it’s another for him to pretend that that service isn’t wiping out the ad revenue newspapers relied on. Worse, he pretends to believe in some fantasy utopian future world of journalism that he’s clearly too intelligent to really believe in. It’s the kind of profound dishonesty that leaves him unredeemable. Your mileage clearly varies.
It’s bizarre how many intertopians idolize Newmark.
But, hey, you’ve got Jay Tea on your side, apparently hoping the newspaper industry “dies”:
The beloved news media presided over the election and re-election of Bill Clinton,
Because as much as the village was obsessessed with a blue dress, much of the media moved on and kept reporting the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years.
The beloved news media presided over … the nearly non-stop trashing of George W. Bush
By (eventually) factually reporting that Bush lied US into war and kept interrupting the fantasy storylines the right wing kept pushing by regularly reporting pesky facts.
The beloved news media … constantly repeated lies about the invasion of Iraq
Agreed. Corporate media prostitutes like Judith Miller and Tim Russert kept pushing the right wing’s lies.
But McClatchy reporters had their facts straight and were crucial in getting the facts disseminated to a wider audience.
The beloved news media … shilled shamelessly for John Kerry
And that succeeded in doing what, exactly?
The beloved news media … helped engineer the election of Barack Obama.
And cut short America’s flirtation with fascism under a dictator who tortured people, lied US into a war, and declared he was above any law with just a signing statement or a secret memo.
The existing news media has been an active irritant on our democracy.
By this it’s assume that Jay Tea is irritated that the news media actively enabled the democratic election of someone he doesn’t like by repeatedly reporting facts and dispelling lies.
That’s not to suggest that the corporate media didn’t do it’s part pushing falsehoods and obscuring facts, but good journalism won through.
This time.
In three years, with friends like Craig Newmark, “good journalism” might be wiped out enough to allow another right wing lunatic to be elected to office.