Newspapers Pass the Hat
March 24, 2008With the crisis in American newspaper publishing, it’s time to look how bringing readers the news, often seen as a public service, can be funded.
The current advertising-and-subscription model is failing. Most publications (save only the Wall Street Journal and a few others) put essentially the entire newspaper on line for free, so they don’t get that 50 cents a day per reader. As for advertising, oy vey.
The problem is that other models don’t work that well either. When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) sends me letters begging for a donation, I send back the postage-paid form with three words written on it “Sell some ads!” As in KCET’s appeals for donations to ‘public’ television, my attitude is ‘Let Exxon pay for it’, in the same way that Archer Daniels Midland buys benign coverage on NPR.
Eric Alterman notes another contribution-funded effort. ”ProPublica, funded by the liberal billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler and headed by the former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, hopes to provide the mainstream media with the investigative reporting that so many have chosen to forgo.” Most newspapers and other outlets would probably look at such offerings as contributed (ie, free) articles, filler on the order of “New Restaurant Offers Intriguing Entrees”.
Government funding is another, even worse option. At best, it will deliver a Voice of America or BBC, a hotbed of bias. At worst, Pravda or the Chinese news agency, delivering articles on the ‘merciless rioters’ of the Tibet uprising–and not delivering this.
So like it or not, market capitalism, as Churchill said of democracy, the worst of all systems except for all others, will probably come up with a solution to deliver the news.