Dutch government to pay salaries of 60 newspaper journalists | guardian.co.uk — At least they are out in the open about it.
The Dutch government is planning to spend €4m (£3.6m) to pay the salaries of 60 young journalists to work on otherwise commercially funded regional and national newspapers across the Netherlands.
On a visit to Amsterdam today, Dutch media minister Ronald Plasterk outlined his
scheme to fund two “government journalists” to work on each of the Netherlands’ 30 or so daily newspapers.Plasterk’s move has echoes of French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s pledge to provide €600m (£565m) in emergency aid to his nation’s failing press industry and supply every 18-year-old with a year’s free subscription to the paper of their choice to boost reading habits.
Found by Adam Curry.
Impartiality?
So this means that reporters can’t report on government dirt.
Are they gay prostitutes?
J/P=?
Did governments pay buggy whip manufacturers when cars started to take over?
In related news, the Whitehouse press corp will continue to be paid by private news media organizations, but they will continue sucking up to Obama at every possible opportunity.
#5. What do you expect? They voted for the man.
As for the 18 year olds. The boys will go for the papers with big color pictures of females or hot cars/motorcycles/choppers etc. Okay combine those two and you have a sure fire winner.
At the rate that newspapers are dying over here, this may be the only model left.
All previous commentators are talking bull.
Firstly, this is hardly the first time the Dutch government subsidizes papers to hire journalists. One reason for this is that the job market in the Netherlands is fundamently different than say the one in the USA. No Dutch employee can be fired without a [costly] lawsuit, for instance. Which in a lot of cases means that people who get a permanent contract at a company or government office stay there virtually for ever.
This is no different in journalism. Most newspapers have staffs with far too many old fogeys. That has been a probleem at least since the 1970s. So from time to time, the newspaper industry cries wolf, and suckers the government into subsidizing its new blood.
Today the papers need the money because the problems the business is facing. Yesterday it was something else. The day before that young journalists needed to get job skills in practive. What’s new.
How is this diferent from BBC journalists?
…the young are the most impressionable and easiest to manipulate into custom designed ideologues..
since MSM news has been losing its grip on the mass puplic’s “mind” at a lightning pace due to
“alternative news” and blogging, this is the “natural choice” for the MSM/GovNewsCorp conglomerate to get in (late as it may be) on the ground floor to manipulate future internet opinion as well as further diffuse any “news conspiracy” stories.
-s