New moochers in town: Newspapers
My column this week looks at the new moochers in town: newspapers. Here’s an overview of the battered industry. And here’s background on the Connecticut papers looking for a rescue.
On a semi-related note, check out Patterico’s post: HotAir.com Had Almost 1/3 the Traffic of the L.A. Times’s Entire Web Site in October. (An additional footnote: We do not use auto-refresh. The LATimes and most major MSM outlets and Drudge do.)
***
Say no to newspaper bailouts
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008
It was supposed to be a joke. As an endless parade of corporate beggars marches to Washington in search of handouts for their beleaguered industries, some of us in the news business snarked that journalists would be next in line. I launched a Newspaper Bailout Countdown Clock on my blog after the New York Times company’s bonds plunged into junk territory in October. A few weeks later, columnist Jon Fine published a tongue-in-cheek memo in BusinessWeek outlining a federal newspaper rescue proposal.
The jibes were meant to be facetious critiques of for-profit enterprises demanding massive taxpayer expenditures under the guise of preserving the “public interest.” But now, in a rather unfunny turn, the newspaper bailout push has actually come to pass.
The Republican governor and the Democrat attorney general of Connecticut went on the record last week in support of government intervention for failing local newspapers. God save us from bipartisanship. Their joint statements pushing a salvage program came in response to news that The Herald in New Britain, The Bristol Press and 11 weekly papers across the state face closure. About 100 jobs are at stake. This is bad news, no question. But cause for apocalyptic talk and expansive meddling by politicians? Please.
“This is the worst financial turmoil I have ever seen, not only in our state but in our nation,” Rell lamented as she expressed her support for some sort of government/media salvation plan. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asserted: “The newspaper is an information lifeline. It provides really an essential service.” Among the “essential services” Blumenthal thinks taxpayers should prop up: marriage notices and school sports announcements.
These items are easily and effectively disseminated online. Connnecticut consumers who are passing up the newspapers who offer these products obviously don’t agree with Blumenthal that it’s “essential” to get them in dead-tree form. But Gov. Rell seems to believe that quaintness is an argument for government funding: “There’s something about having that paper and being able to sit there with your cup of coffee or your tea and read through and find out not only the news but the real feel for a community.”
Local lemonade stands give you a “real feel for a community,” too. Should Johnny and Susie get handouts for keeping it real? Should we resurrect Woolworth’s with some of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s bottomless bailout billions while we’re at it? Why not bring back town criers with public subsidies, as well?
Unperturbed, seven Democratic state legislators stepped up further pressure by sending a letter to Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development seeking help for the dying newspapers. With straight faces, they wrote: “As elected officials, ourselves, we want [the] public to have access to independent news about what is going on in government and our communities. We share the sentiments of our nation’s leaders who wrote the Bill of Rights that a free press is an essential part of democracy.”
How “free” can a “free press” be if it is leveraged with government funding? How free would they be to criticize other corporate enterprises seeking local, state, or federal help to keep them afloat in hard times? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? A press beholden to the ruling class – a press that cannot stand on its own two feet and the strength of its products — is a press better off dead.
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The sonofdy daily news needs at least 100 million. It has a readership of at least, how many people are here again???
Hey! Newspapers are great!
for lighting Briquettes.
Just think of it this way, after the hyper inflation kicks in, it will be cheaper to line the bird cage with hundreds than to buy a newspaper.
I wish that was a joke.
Here’s an application for anyone else who wants in…
I cancelled my subscription to the Indianapolis newspapers when they told me that boondocks was a “comic strip” and belonged on the comics page rather than the editorial page. Of course, they wouldn’t carry Mallard Fillmore because that was “too political”.
I might not even mind so much a newspaper getting bailed out if they covered an actual sport – such as gymnastics – rather than local bowling leagues on their sports pages. It’s almost as bad as ESPN. I mean, seriously, are dog shows and hot dog eating contests really sports?
If the government really wants to get involved in newspapers, when why not prosecute the New York Times for treason? Why not have a “fairness doctrine” for newspapers, thus forcing them to have an equal number of editors and reporters that are conservative?
I got a computer and some paper, how about I print my own newspaper and get a bailout too? I kan evene spelll!!
/sarc
There is an old English saying, “He who takes the king’s shilling becomes the king’s man.” That is why government bailouts of any media organization are a threat to the First Amendment.
Yes indeed it is better off dead and so are we. I dropped the Arizona Republic newspaper years ago-they had become a completely dishonest rag. They would report the news to suit their views and tell any lie to accomplish that. I dropped US News and World Report after many years when they had just one too many “There really was no Jesus and besides He was a Social Worker” article. My subscription ran out more than two years ago, I told them why yet they are sending me Last Issue, please come back. I must not be the only one, they are dropping the print edition and going all digital.
I do not know-perhaps Congress will send them billions to publish pro Obama stories-I still won’t read them.
When the FCC and Congress does get around to the Fairness Doctrine and this blog and talk radio are gone hopefully we will have Pirate Radio and Short Wave Resistance. Sixty plus millions of Americans voted for the Fascist but millions of others of us will resist. We are entering a Dark Night-these too are the times that try men’s souls.
SAVE THE NEWSPAPERS!
How else will we,
Line the bird cage.
Train the new puppy.
Wrap fish.
Thanks Ken. First, I’ll go buy a new house, a new Corvette, new Chevrolet Z-71 four-wheel-drive truck, new Cadillac, three new Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a new bass boat, a new pontoon pleasure boat, a new travel trailer, then I’ll say if I don’t get a bailout all of those companies I’m supporting there will suffer.
It was only a matter of time. We can see this crap (and smell it) from a mile away.
I have not bought a newspaper in 7 years. I get used ones from yuppies to start my fireplace in the winter…doing my CO2 part (which, by the way, will be on the increase once The One sees to it to allow utility prices to go out the roof).
It would be interesting to compare who gets bailouts to who supported the dems.
Good point jangar. Time to invest in a wood burning fireplace?
Mooching goes two ways. Most of the actual content on blogs (left and right) comes from newspapers or wire services.
Were talking about money here Moron.
If they have not supported the Dems before, they will. Corporate hookers.
This is like watching the clipper ship companies asking the government to bail them out so they can compete with the companies converting to steam powered vessels. Whale oil anyone?
Wouldn’t go without one. I recommend the Buckstove, google it. Almost 100% efficient. And the fuel is renewable (trees grow).
Wrong lgm, most of the crap in news and wire comes from idots with a perverted agenda.
I’m sure if you told her to sign over her paycheck in order to keep this rag afloat she would look at you as if you had two heads, but it makes perfect sense for taxpayers to prop up a newspaper because she gets a real feel for a community. Nevermind the fact that she is the Governor and if she needs to feel a real sense of community then she should get out from behind her desk and head out into said community.
As with the auto-makers, it’s not really an industry that they are seeking to preserve, but a business model.
In the case of auto-makers, the bailout to preserve union wages and benefits and prevent the industry from having to become competitive.
In the case of newspapers, the bailouts are intended to preserve a bastion of slanted coverage and protect the Journalist Caste from competing with the faster, more diverse internet.
If we had had this Congress in 1908, they would have been keeping the whale oil lamp manufacturers in business.
You mean horoscopes and comics are “essential”?
I’m willing to bet that more than half of the L.A. Times’ traffic is generated by its sports section.
Rush is hot and Franken is not, radio-wise. Have the lib newspapers considered this?
No bailouts due to bad business models!
I get the “weekend subscription” of the Tampa Tribune (slightly less socialist than the St Pete Times). However, for the last 2 yrs, I have been getting the daily paper for free…
Started out with a “customer appreciation, free week of papers”, but they just kept coming, week after week. I called and told them I didn’t want the daily paper. They kept coming. I called again… they kept coming. Finally got my renewal bill, lo and behold, they wanted me to pay for the daily paper! I called, said no, I only want the weekend paper. I paid for the weekend only. Week later, get a call on my machine about how I’m such a good customer, they are sending me a week of free papers. Needless to say they keep coming no matter what, so I’ve stopped calling to complain. This repeats every 6 months.
If they want to waste their capital by sending me free papers, so be it. Just more for the landfill and the bird cage. No bailouts for stupidity!
my hometown Post Disgrace has become so worthless that they are throwing it on nonsubscribers lawns just to keep their “circulation” numbers up so they can bilk the advertisers. they are so biased they even endorsed Mondale in 84.
If the Capitol building were on fire, Pelosi, Reid, et al. would throw money at the flames in hopes of extinguishing them.
Depends on the blogger: a well connected blogger (like our hostess) with a high profile in party politics and a well-established working relationship with partisan politicians can blog without the incessant need of newsprint, and can often scoop them with stories that are more immediate, detailed and indisputably factual.
I dropped my local rag subscription years ago. Nothing more than printed Democrat talking points, and more expensive than the big city Richmond and Washington papers.
I don’t fish, have a bird or a puppy, and the comics were better when there was Calvin and Hobbes.
Michelle.. no more jokes about Bailing out the communist party…
or the Alphabet networks..
or any other bail out jabs..
they are coming true..
I do subscribe to our local paper and the L A Times Sunday edition – mostly for the coupons my wife uses. They pay for the subscription.
I would miss neither, though, should they fold.
Yup. and the Far Side. Miss ‘em both.
I wonder if a conservative paper has a community feel?
Save a tree. Kill a newspaper.
Wasn’t it somewhere in the past year that libs (I think on the Bill Moyers show, for one) were talking about federalizing the news media?
Nothing communistic about that…let’s call it an Obamunist idea.
I was wondering how lgm would spin this and this time lgm is right! Most of the info on blogs is opinion and so goes newspapers!
So lgm, the only logical conclusion is not to bail out ANY opinion journals. See how easy that was?
If this were to come to fruition, it would be the MOTHER OF ALL BAILOUTS!!! To reward the INCOMPETENCE, STUPIDITY, and MISS-MANAGEMENT of these BUFFOONS with TAX PAYERS MONEY, would be the greatest SLAP in the face ever perpetrated against the AMERICAN PEOPLE… This CANNOT be allowed to happen, EVER!!!
Dude …
WHERE’s MY BAILOUT?!?!?!
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Buggy Whips. Dead trees for news are, well, dead.
Wake up and smell the daisies.
Concerning NewsPapers, for the Federal Gov’t to keep this dying medium afloat would be the same as if the Federal Gov’t kept the horse and buggy afloat in face of the coming of the Automobile.
That applies to the Auto Industry today as well, because the Feds insist that the Auto Industry makes cars few people want and insist, also, that they continue with their rediculous contracts with Labor that will never let them keep their heads above water for very long, regardless of the size of the bailout.
I’m just waiting for the blaring headline:
“Detroit Free Press seeks government bailout”.
The subversion and perversion of our Constitution will then be complete.
Why aren’t the global warming, and other environmental groups all over this? Could it be that perhaps they are caught up in a quandary?
How can one support free speech and the “all important” printed press, yet rail against carbon emissions that the printing presses produce? Not to mention the energy taken away from “those who need it most,” the destruction of forests (for the paper products), which depletes the CO2 coverters (trees), and the rampant over-harvest of macrocystis pyrifera (Pacific Ocean kelp) for the production of sodium alginate, a key ingredient in the “inking” process.
Gosh, the forests are critical habitats for endangered species, as are the giant kelp forests off the coast of California. How will the spotted owls, sea otters, abalone, sea urchins, white sea bass, and many others species survive this rape of nature? (sarc/off)
All this to print newspapers that no one needs, or wants to read? For the sake of 100 jobs, the environmental wackos will look the other way? Oh, yea, they need the press to promote their propaganda, and to support the liberal agenda…
Remember the
Alamounreleased tape!As a precondition for any money they must agree to the following government imposed standards:
1) A warning label must be affixed warning that artificial ingredients are used in place of organic ones, such as for objectivity;
Warning:
MayWill contain synthetic subjectivity!2) A BTU rating per page label must also be included with the goal of 20% higher BTU efficiency by the year 2015
3) Newspapers must agree to use alternate sources of paper other than trees or woody shrubbery with the goal of eliminating this dependence on endangered fibers by the year 2021
4)A parrot/parakeet/cockatoo Traumatic Evaluation Study must be commissioned and funded by the paper to evaluate and treat birds damaged by the long term exposure to manipulated word pollution.
5) All editors and editors-to-be must write on the blackboard 500 times-
“I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!”
6) All employees will be subject to reeducation debriefing to rid them of political correctness disease and distortion syndrome, PCDDS.
I haven’t read the Boston Globe in ten years. And after getting sick and tired of the liberal talking points in my local weekly I gave that up too. They did call to ask why and I told them that I had no interest in the surburban version of Pravda. I will say that if I could get a version without the editorial pages I might re-subscribe because I enjoy reading the local goings-on in my town. It’s a shame, really.
But if they’re going under, it’s their own damn fault.
Actually this separation of press and state must be maintained and the CEO of Google should not be allowed to take a government position either.
The Constitution is being stressed in so many ways right now it isn’t even funny.
Hopefully, on Friday we will see signs that it prevail!