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Save Us …

From those who would save us from ourselves! Connecticut lawmaker wants to bail out failing newspapers. Reuters: 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

“You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it,” he said.

Yeah, that. We need socialized news like we need a hole in the head. Then there’s the fact that people are not reading pulp products. How about subsidies for town criers and the nation’s vital tin-can-and-string network?

If you want to save the news industry, post a prize for the person who figures out a new way to finance it, and a cheap way to get reading devices in everyone’s hands. Throwing out the FCC’s cross-ownership ban once and for all might also help, though I suspect that horse is edging for the door if it hasn’t already bolted. How many TV networks want to saddle themselves with pulp anvils at this point?

If government intervention is really necessary, I say we go full Stalin. Round up and shoot a few editors and publishers who insist on producing aggressively boring, unresponsive products with bloated staffs and raging senses of entitlement. The others will notice. But don’t reward people with a 20th-century mentality, 19th-century technology, and no business sense whatsoever.

Full disclosure: I work for a newspaper. It is operating in the black, knock on wood, thanks to creative leadership at all levels and aggressive cost-cutting measures, including extensive newsroom cuts and the shuttering of its onsite presses. With a third the staff we had when I started here in the early 1990s, and a small fraction of the staff our broadsheet competition has, we continue to kick the competition’s bloated, boring ass on a regular basis, producing a relevant, agenda-driving product that makes pols hop, TV crews scramble, and sows consternation among our adversaries. No matter what the critics who have always looked down their noses might say. It is because we are highly adaptive, and have had our heads on the block, or backs to the wall for decades. As they say, nothing focuses the mind like an execution. Will we continue to defy the decades-old predictions of our pending demise? Who knows. That could all come to a screeching halt tomorrow. What I do know is that the competition is facing a more dire crisis thanks to a bloated staff, loaded with do-nothings with absurd job protections, multiple layers of institutional obtuseness, absentee ownership that’s eating the seed corn, and a market value around 2 percent of what was paid for it 15 years ago. I hope they get through this, however, because I would like to see this remain a two-newspaper town. Competition is healthy.

The Other McCain with more on the great suckage of the FCC’s cross-ownership ban.

Topics: media, moronocy

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:12 am on Friday, January 2, 2009

7 Responses to “Save Us …”

1. And Here It Comes: Socialized Journalism « Tai-Chi Policy Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm

   [...] January 2, 2009 Posted by taoist in Fascism, Socialism, The Media. trackback Jules Crittendon has the link, and some commentary. Bloggers have been joking for years about how newspapers are failing due to their blatant bias [...]

2. NeoConScum Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm

   …and this in from The Peoples Republic of Oregon: The legal eagle genius types there are alarmed that too many Green Oregonians are driving Hybrids and non-gas guzzlers and that Gasoline tax revenues won’t keep up with road maintainance, etc. SO, listen closely, the little droids are scheming up a plan where MILEAGE on a car would be taxed.

   I LUV the Left.

3. In Connecticut, it’s more than “Government aid for newspapers” « My Cardboard Box Says:
   January 2nd, 2009 at 9:04 pm

   [...] Connecticut, it’s more than “Government aid for newspapers” There been much to-do about Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro’s and fellow legislators’ [...]

4. Alan Kellogg Says:
   January 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm

   Jules,

   You want to see a contrast to your model, take a look at the blathering and bloviating of the San Diego Union Tribune. A newspaper that once won awards for local coverage, which now kowtows and brown noses for the local kleptocracy. The UT already gets handouts from government, and the quality and utility has declined like nobody’s business.

   What could happen if government gets involved in running the press? It’s already happened, and it is ugly. The Union/Tribune is the propaganda arm of the city of San Diego, and we’re being damaged for it.

5. MikeH Says:
   January 4th, 2009 at 12:51 am

   O/T 7.6 earthquake New Guinea followed by a 7.3. No tsunami to speak of, maybe in the local area.

6. An Irritating Truth Says:
   January 4th, 2009 at 7:17 am

   Government aid isn’t going to save newspapers. Are they crazy? How can newspapers expect to remain truly independent if the only lifeline keeping them alive is a government bail-out? Talk about sleeping with the enemy.

   Newsflash Mr. Crittenden: the forum for accessible digital news already exists. It’s content we should be concerned about. The problem isn’t infrastructure. Infrastructure is already there (in theory): iPhones, PDA’s, laptops, home media centres - just four out of a handful of devices that are making news consumption accessible anytime, anywhere. The problem is newspapers dragging their feet. The technology is already here, the “revolution” has already happened, but it would be nice to go to the SMH on my iPhone without it crashing the browser. Newspapers need to invest and overhaul their webpages and portable digital news services and they need to dramatically improve their content. Just because it’s the internet doesn’t mean readers want to have their intelligence insulted.

   For more information on the future of global news consumption, visit An Irritating Truth
   at :
   http://www.anirritatingtruth.blogspot.com

7. The Newspaper is Dead « An Irritating Truth Says:
   February 9th, 2009 at 4:12 am

   [...] his blog, Jules Crittenden argues, “if you want to save the news industry, post a prize for the person who figures out a [...]

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