Let's see. The government took over the auto industry. The banking industry. And the Obama Administration is taking a crack at the medical industry. Busy, busy, busy ...
Now, there's a bailout bill for newspapers floating around in the Senate pipeline.
Seriously. It's Senate Bill 673, the "Newspaper Revitalization Act," introducd by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). The bill supposedly will give news outlets a bunch of tax breaks if they reorganize as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin's Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).
OK. I'm real dubious about the way bailouts are shaking out these days. Each one I'd mentioned so far (auto and banking) brought large measures of control into the mix. And the thought of the government -- any government -- buying even a modicum of control in the media should be enough to freeze you.
Sure, in my argument I'm probably engaging in some real leaps in logic, but let's get serious. Any time big money goes into something, be it from government or the private sector, expect some quid pro quo. One would be a fool to think this will just be free money to the media, and this proposed bailout is not from the kindness of the government's heart -- it has no heart. Plus, again, look at the most recent bailouts in banking and the auto industry. No matter how you dress it up and put a bow on it, these industries are under a lot more government control than they were before the first check was scratched out.
I live in a free society and like it that way. And my first question about the proposed media bailout is, what's the pro quo in exchange for the quid?
Admittedly, the mainstream media is toast. Although I seldom buy a newspaper, I make it a point to download (via RSS subscription feed) a whole bunch of news stories from many different outlets. My feeds include CNN, USA Today, Reuters, the BBC, New York Times, the Newser aggretator, Time, and Newsweek. Plus the Post & Courier and Charleston Watch feeds for local news. Reading this stuff gives me the feeling I'm going down for the third time in a vat of warm maple syrup.
When I left the mainstream news industry in 1997, the Internet was still more of a toy than a tool. No one really considered the possibility that it may be a real rival to print journalism. No one had heard of "blogging," and the first time I hard the term -- five years after my "retirement," I thought it was an indecent and physically impossible act. Our biggest rivals for the news were the other newspapers in whatever area I was working, plus that thing we called the "electronic media," which at the time meant radio and TV. Working for weeklies and smaller dailies, I delighted in leaving the big boys napping on vital news stories, in asking the questions no one else dared to ask, in zagging on stories while everyone else was zigging.
Probably the highest praise I received in journalism was when I wrote for the Mohave County Standard, which was the smallest and least profitable newspaper in Bullhead City, Arizona, a three-paper area. We were going head to head with the Mohave Valley Daily News (where I once worked) and the Bullhead City Bee (where I once worked). "I read the Mohave Valley News to see what they say, and the Bee to see what they say," some of my readers told me. "I read The Standard to find out what really happened."
Fun times. Too bad The Standard couldn't afford to pay me.
In the past year, several of your larger newspapers either shut their doors or went into bankruptcy, operating as a shell of their former selves. The others cut their news staffs to the bone, relying more on wire copy from the Associated Press. And the news has been trivialized, with more stuff on your favorite pop culture idol than on news that actually has some effect on you.
This most recent election showed how truly exposed the news industry is. I don't think the large media outlets gave a whit about what Barack Obama had to say -- or John McCain, Sarah Palin, or Hillary Clinton -- but they fell in love with Obama the rock star.
And threw their last scraps of credibility into the nearest dumpster.
Meanwhile, you'd have to go to the blogs to find out what really happened. So far, the government is not going to bail the bloggers out anytime soon, so there will be a sense of independence you're not going to find in your mainstream media.
Unfortunately, everyone's got a blog these days, and most of them are full of crap. And yeah, I'll admit it to being full of it sometimes. Being full of it is the prerogative of the editorial "I."
I have a lot of blogs in my RSS feeds. And I try to get some sort of balance there. Of course a guy like me will have many feeds from the libertarian and right-wing sites, but I also have many from the hard-left gang.
While you're not going to find The Ultimate, Be-All Truth out of a blog -- nothing made by purely human hands is going to have that -- at least reading stuff from many different sources will broaden one's understanding of what's going on in the world.
And at least, the blogs are not subject to government influence, favors, or control.
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