Review of materials on newspapers

Newspapers are an immediate to concern as across the nation newspapers are closing, limiting publication to once a week or a few times a week, and declaring bankruptcy. National newspapers like The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today are in the same boat. There are many theories about why this is happening. Generally everyone agrees the dire straits of the newspaper industry is closely tied to the rise of the internet and the economic recession. But beyond that there is little agreement.

For many, including Kurtz and McIntyre, the problem was top management's failure in vision about the future. Management, they say, was so busy looking at postal rates and unions, they could not see that the publishing industry was being transformed. Because they lacked this vision, newspapers missed opportunities to remake themselves and create a viable business model.

Others, including David Simon, creator of HBO's Wire, and David Sirota argue that newspapers have lost readership because the leaders of the industry took their eye off the real business of papers--that is true blue reporting. Sirota suggests that rather than spending money and doing local reporting that gains a loyal local audience, newspapers wanted to make more money. They dramatically cut local reporting to fill their papers with national news that they could fill pages for fewer dollars. Then this material became less and less about news and more and more about celebraties. Newspapers lost readership. Either of these positions is compatible with what Nicholson and McChesney say was the main problem, i.e., the profit motive.

Others, including Issacson, Steve Brill and Rupert Murdoch, do not see the profit motive itself as the problem. Indeed they see the profit motive as central to a remaking of the newspaper. The problem as they see it is that when the internet started, news began to be free. With that free access, those who used to pay for the news ceased to do so. If we could just restore those funds to the papers, all would be well. And so, they have devised a way to have people make micropayments for the bits of news they want. Unfortunately, this model seems flawed as many have argued, including, David Ignatius of the Post, Michael Kinsley and Jack Shafer of Slate and the Pew Research Center per Stephey in Time. The problems are multiple. First it has been tried and people do not want to pay for news on the web. In part because there is so much on the web, but also because the web feels more like TV or radio, media that have long provided news free of cost. Now Nicholson and McChesney, along with Swensen, and even Sen. Cardin of Maryland, would like to see news organizations function as non-profits, perhaps with some government subsidies, although not with direct government support. These alternatives are rejected by those Etheridge calls future positivists, Clay Shirky and Steven Berlin Johnson as well as Kinsley, Shafer, Huffington and Ignatious, all of whom believe that the answer lies in the web itself. They argue that the web has made publishing houses basically irrelevant. The web will find enough advertising to support itself and that will be enough. Further, we will continue to add citizen journalists.

The Pew Research Center's report of the media is less-sanguine. It suggests that there has been a decoupling of news and advertising that is severe. While Stephey in his article does not mention it, it would seem that Pew Research Center does not see the fund to publish the real crux of the matter. It seems Pew sees the loss of indepth high end news reporting that advertising once subsidized as the true source of the decline of news. They suggest that this high end reporting has been on a continual decline for the last thirty years. They cite the fact that only half the states have reporters in Congress. Similarly, Belinda Luscombe from Time points out that the number of people who are covering the State Houses in the United States is down to 355 from 524 six years ago. At those State House there exist very few citizen reporters.

Thus, while the web provides some benefits and some cost cutting in terms of the nuts and bolts of publishing, it is inadequate to fix this other problem, this central intellectual void. Intellectual labor is time-consuming and expensive and must be paid for. The Pew Center seemed stymied by how to pay for it, as just about everyone has been. They suggest that endowments for news programs, as suggested by Swensen and Swensen, would be too limited to pay for adequate reporting. What it suggests, though in Stephey’s article it seems almost an afterthought, is a cable fee model for the internet as there has been nothing in this way yet imposed, what business could impose it? In many ways, one wonders if this isn't a tax by another name. For an internet fee seems destined to be collected by the government and then doled out. Therefore, it seems to me that Nichols and McChesney and the Senator are trying to find government sponsored ways to pay for the news while keeping government control under control. Pew almost seems to be proposing a tax that looks like the BBC tax on TV collected in England.