Without newspapers I would have no memories of sitting on my grandmother’s lap learning how to read. I wouldn’t have had one of the most interesting careers on the planet nor a way of finding out what’s really going on in the world.
I have spent all of my adult life in the business, so it would be dishonest of me to say that I wasn’t heartened to read President Obama’s words about journalism and that he would consider bailing out newspapers.
But the side of me with “bailout fatigue” has to wonder if saving newspapers is the best use of taxpayers’ money.
Declining readership, dwindling advertising dollars and the growing popularity of Web sites and cable news shows have all put enormous financial pressures on newspapers, which threatens the industry’s survival — and some newspapers have already gone under .
With more and more Americans turning to YouTube or “The Daily Show” for news these days, bailing out newspapers probably isn’t one of the soundest investments to make right now.
In praising newspaper journalism, Obama added: “I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding.” The president’s worries underscore the findings in a Pew Research Center survey released this month that shows public assessment about the accuracy and independence of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades. Just days after Obama made his comments about a bailout, Congress held a hearing on the future of newspapers. The hearing, coincidentally, came on the very same day the parent company of the publication you’re reading right now laid off 44 workers. “ . . . the government can help foster solutions for this industry in ways which protect the independence of newspapers and enables their objective reporting to thrive in a new economic and media climate,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney , D-N.Y., who chaired the Sept. 24 hearing. Maloney has also introduced legislation she says will enable local newspapers to take advantage of nonprofit status as a way to preserve their place in communities nationwide. If attendance at the hearing is an indication for how much appetite members of Congress have for saving newspapers, then the industry just might be doomed. Only three of the 20 House and Senate members showed up for it, and the Democratic chairman left early to vote on a House bill, putting the ranking Republican in charge, The Washington Times reported. Since the days of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Fathers insisted on a free press. “[It] would be quite as significant to declare that government ought to be free, that taxes ought not to be excessive, etc., as that the liberty of the press ought not to be restrained,” Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 84.
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