The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).
In early May, Gibbs said that while he hadn’t asked the president specifically about bailout options for newspapers, “I don’t know what, in all honesty, government can do about it.” “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,” he said.
I don’t know about you, but I feel a little tapped out at the moment.
BACK to the old ways..
FREE PAPERS..
the adverts PAY for it..
I have not bought or read a newspaper in years. Last week, the delivery boy (or girl, or transgendered individual) tossed one on my driveway. I guess it was my wonderful free sample. I was pissed somebody threw garbage into my property, and tossed it into the street. Then I reconsidered, got the paper, took out the pink section, removed the crossword puzzles (two), and THEN threw the paper into the street.
At least around here in Albuquerque, commercial newspapers are failing, but the free tabloids (the Albi anyway, but there are others) seem to be thriving. The Alibi actually has staff that do investigative reporting, so is well worth reading. I seem to remember another tabloid in Chicago from a few decades ago that was better than the Sun Times and the Chicago Trib.
Van Jones, avoid the story until he quits.
ACORN, avoid the story.
National Endowment for the Arts trying to get artists to sell the government line: avoid the story.
Sounds like the newspapers are already working for the government.
NO F’n way.
No. What are these intellectually disabled congresspeople going to attempt next?
That’s a bailout in the same sense that the Humane Society and Jerry’s Kids are being bailed out. The absence of taxation for a nonprofit does not equate to free money.
Sorry but Congress has already burned me enough for one year.
No.
“Bailout”, when written as one word, is a noun.
What you are trying to say in your headline is “bail out”, which is the verb form of the word.
Don’t think I’d want to bail out journalism that doesn’t know the difference.
You nitwits think we can throw away the press with no repercussions? Why do you think the founding fathers put freedom of the press in the FIRST AMENDMENT? They knew that the presence of a free press was vital in a democratic republic. Hello? Checks and balances? Were you all sleeping through civics class in high school?
And sure, the press is severely damaged — run by billion-dollar companies who only care about the bottom line and not about performing their duties keeping government and big biz honest. But the solution is not to THROW AWAY the free press, the solution is to FIX IT.
Nitwit wingnuts throwing away our most precious freedoms. Not surprising, I suppose — you’re the ones who loooooved Bush’s domestic spying without warrants and torture.
Thanks for sharing your unique viewpoint, Alfie.
So, anyone care to comment on the loss of our free press and the implications for our democratic republic?
After we’ve had the auto bailout, the executives are switching to making green cars per instruction of the government.
They are investigating Humana for sending out a mailer to people who get Medicare Advantage.
They are using the NEA to have artists promote Obama’s agenda.
So Phydeau, the government propping up newspapers is protecting a free press?
#50 MikeN, right now the press is owned by mega-billion dollar corporations. Their interest in running a newspaper is strictly profit-oriented. The free press is supposed to keep the government honest. Investigative reporters cost money that comes off their profit margin, so they’re being cut. How is this fulfilling the function of a free press that the founding fathers envisioned?
The free press is supposed to report on corporate malfeasance also. When the press itself is owned by the corporations it’s supposed to be reporting on, how can it do that job?
No one is saying we should have government-run media. But newspapers and TV and radio fulfill a vital function in our society, that our founding fathers acknowledged, and shouldn’t be shut down just because they’ve become an unprofitable part of some mega-billion dollar corporation.
The NEA is the National Endowment for the Arts, it’s not the press. What are you talking about?
# 49 I had to laugh “loss of our free press”
#53 Yes, it isn’t that “free” nowadays, but it’s all we got… and we should try to improve it, not throw it away.
And despite what the headline says, allowing a corporation to become non-profit is not “bailing them out” — it’s not like giving billions to the banks. There are plenty of non-profit corporations out there, and no one is accusing the government of “bailing them out”.
Phydeau,
http://tinyurl.com/neaprop
“I have been asked by people in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country.”
Another story the newspapers are ignoring.
We aren’t losing freedom of press, we are losing the archaic newsPAPER. We will still be getting news, just in digital or audio/video format. Why is news printed upon a piece of paper any more trustworthy than when it’s published by the same people online?
#56 Um, we’re giving billions to banks and you’re worried about artists being paid to create “rah rah America” art?
That doesn’t even have anything to do with the topic of the thread. Maybe you need to breathe into a bag for a few minutes; it helps with the hyperventilation.
Anyone have a comment on the topic?
#57 The newspapers are publishing their content online, for now, but they haven’t figured out any way to make money on it. Newspapers are in dire straits. Once they go, poof, all that online content that you’re reading for free is gone too.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch… if you don’t pay for news gathering, you won’t get it.
#59: How does Google make most of its money? Advertisements. How do newspapers and magazines make money in their print form? Advertisements. Most of their money comes from advertisements anyways, not subscribers.
Thank heavens a press beholden to the government would still be free to attack the hand that feeds it.
Or maybe disagree politely.
Or maybe write neutrally.
Or perhaps damn with faint praise.
Or perhaps just have a smiling Obama on the front cover quarterly instead of on 25% of the issues.
WORST IDEA EVER… and there is a lot of competition for this from this administration and congress
Once again, it will be the major stockholders and board members being “bailed out”, not the business itself. The papers’ workers will still loose jobs or take pay cuts. And paper execs will still get a pay raise or bonus.
I lost a good paying job at a local steel plant. Nobody talked about saving it, or bailing it up. Or even rescuing it from the under priced competition of foreign made steel. As far as I know, we still use steel in the US. So it’s not like the demand has gone away, as with print journalism. But the government and bank just allowed domestic steel to fail, in favor of foreign.
The difference is, I’m guessing, that the “blogoshpere” isn’t something that the banks and major investors can switch their wealth over to. It’s not a foreign business, with lower labor costs, no retirement funds, and not fewer environmental restrictions. It’s electronic media, that they’d have to beg to be investors of. And they don’t like being on the defensive. So they’re hoping the gov. will just bail out their existing publishing empires. So they don’t feel the pinch of 21th century obsolescence.
Phydeau, first you bemoan the loss of newspapers, then you complain that the newspapers we have aren’t doing their job(which I agree with).
So if these corporate owned papers aren’t doing their job, why give them more money? Let them close, and be replaced by ones that do the job right.
The point about the NEA, was that it is a story the newspapers aren’t covering, and an example of the government influencing the entity it is funding, which is what would happen with newspapers.
#63 The point of allowing there to be non-profit newspapers is to do what you say in the second paragraph, replace the corporate-owned newspapers with non-profit ones that do the job better, that won’t be beholden to their corporate masters.
#61 Thank heavens a press beholden to the government would still be free to attack the hand that feeds it.
And a press beholden to big corporations is better?
And no matter how many times you say it, allowing newspapers to reincorporate as non-profits is not a government bailout. There are lots of nonprofits out there, and no one is saying the government is bailing them out.