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The Washington Post Boys Now Want Your Tax Dollars to Put Out Their Paper
Okay, it's not the Washington Post literally, but a commission headed by Leonard Downie Jr., the Post's former executive editor, wants taxpayers to subsidize the Washington Post and other comparable papers. There is an argument that the media perform a public service by informing the public exposing corruption, and therefore deserve public support, but it would be hard to make this case for many existing news outlets.
It would be a simple matter to construct a system that involved taxpayer subsidies in which the taxpayers themselves decided where their money goes, instead of that choice being made by "smart" people like Mr. Downie. Unfortunately, the people currently in control of the media in the United States have little interest in publicizing more democratically based alternatives.
--Dean Baker
COMMENTS (7)
Hopefully when we're sponsoring the Washington Post they'll be able to improve their quality.
From the article:
"Turns out while the McClatchy Company’s advertising revenue fell 28.1 percent in the third quarter, it was not as bad as the 29.9 percent it dropped in the first six months."
I'm sure there's a rational explanation why we would want to compare the third quarter with the first six months of the year. And that rational explanation would probably explain how dropping 7.025% a month is better than dropping 4.98% a month.
Posted by: Hobbes | October 19, 2009 6:17 PM
Instead of newspapers and the networks spending big money on pundits, why don't they spend them on reportial resources and let the pundits capitalize on their brands by blogging ! The amounts paid to George Will and David Broder probably could pay for 10 real reporters. The "insider gossip" offered by the pundits is more suitable for cable outlets analogous to TMZ.
Posted by: H-Bob | October 19, 2009 7:34 PM
We already have government subsidies for news: PBS and NPR. Both were so heavily attacked by republicans and the directors so heavily skewed by republican appointments that these outlets became somewhere between non-news outlets and republican talking points broadcasters. The wapo and most other big newspapers are already in that position, so they apparently feel that they would fit right in.
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